The Art of Poetry: An Epistle to the Pisos: Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola AD Pisones, De Arte Poetica.

“The aim of the poet is to inform or delight, or to combine together, in what he says, both pleasure and applicability to life. In instructing, be brief in what you say in order that your readers may grasp it quickly and retain it faithfully. Superfluous words simply spill out when the mind is already full. Fiction invented in order to please should remain close to reality.””

— Horace

“It is not enough for poems to be beautiful; they must be affecting, and must lead the heart of the hearer as they will.””

— Horace

“He who combines the useful and the pleasing wins out by both instructing and delighting the reader. That is the sort of book that will make money for the publisher, cross the seas, and extend the fame of the author.””

— Horace

“Lectio, quae placuit, decies repetita placebit.(What we read with pleasure we can read many times with pleasure.)””

— Horace

“Quidquid praecipies, esto brevis.(Whatever advice you give, be brief.)””

— Horace

“Nor must you make such an exordium, as the Cyclic writer of old: "I will sing the fate of Priam, and the noble war." What will this boaster produce worthy of all this gaping? The mountains are in labor, a ridiculous mouse will be brought forth.””

— Horace

“As leaves in the woods are changed with the fleeting years; the earliest fall off first: in this manner words perish with old age, and those lately invented nourish and thrive, like men in the time of youth. We, and our works, are doomed to death.””

— Horace

“Perhaps you know how to draw a cypress tree: so what, if you've been given money to paint a sailor plunging from a shipwreckin despair?””

— Horace

“The man who mingles the useful with the sweet carries the day by charming his reader and at the same time instructing him.””

— Horace