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To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom.

— Horace Epistles (-20)

Virtus est vitium fugere et sapientia prima
stultitia caruisse.

Original text (Latin)

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Wisdom

More quotes by Horace

He wins every hand who mingles profit with pleasure, by delighting and instructing the reader at the same time.

Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (-18)

What odds does it make to the man who lives within Nature's bounds, whether he ploughs a hundred acres or a thousand?

Satires (-35)

The mountains will be in labor, and a ridiculous mouse will be brought forth.

Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (-18)

He who has begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin!

Epistles (-20)

I have made a monument more lasting than bronze.

Odes (-23)

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If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.

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'The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.'

William Shakespeare As You Like It (1599)

It takes extraordinary wisdom and self-control to accept that many things have a logic we do not understand that is smarter than our own.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.

George Chapman All Fools (1605)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Horace (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.