Mastodawn

Dear sire, and offspring worthy of your fire!
We bards are dupes to what ourselves admire.
Would I be brief — I grow confused and coarse;
Who aims at smoothness, fails in fire and force;
In him who soars aloft, bombast is found;
Who fears to face the tempest, crawls aground.
Who courts variety and fain would ring
A thousand changes on the self-same string,
Will paint, as ’twere in fancy’s wildest mood
Boars in the wave and dolphins in the wood.
Thus even error, shun’d without address,
Breeds error, diff’rent in its kind, not less.

[Maxima pars vatum, pater et iuvenes patre digni,
decipimur specie recti: brevis esse laboro,
obscurus fio; sectantem levia nervi
deficiunt animique; professus grandia turget;
serpit humi tutus nimium timidusque procellae:
qui variare cupit rem prodigialiter unam,
delphinum silvis adpingit, fluctibus aprum:
in vitium ducit culpae fuga, si caret arte.]

Horace (65–8 BC) Roman poet, satirist, soldier, politician [Quintus Horatius Flaccus]
Epistles [Epistularum, Letters], Book 2, ep. 3 “Art of Poetry [Ars Poetica; To the Pisos],” l. 24ff (2.3.24-31) (19 BC) [tr. Howes (1845)]

More about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/horace/14582/

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Horace - Epistles [Epistularum, Letters], Book 2, ep. 3 "Art of Poetry [Ars Poetica; To the Pisos]," l. 24ff (2.3.24-31) (19 BC) [tr. Howes (1845)] | WIST Quotations

Dear sire, and offspring worthy of your fire! We bards are dupes to what ourselves admire. Would I be brief -- I grow confused and coarse; Who aims at smoothness, fails in fire and force; In him who soars aloft, bombast is found; Who fears to face the tempest, crawls…

WIST Quotations

UberZeitgeist Aug 1, 2025

August arriving
With bombast and bravado
Later summer joys

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Werner Keil Sep 21, 2024

Herrlich anzuschauen: Darum ist #BeetlejuiceBeetlejuice so eine Wohltat inmitten von überladenem #Blockbuster #Bombast https://www.filmstarts.de/nachrichten/1000104671.html

Herrlich anzuschauen: Darum ist "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" so eine Wohltat inmitten von überladenem Blockbuster-Bombast

36 Jahre lagen zwischen „Beetlejuice“ und „Beetlejuice Beetlejuice“. In dieser Zeit haben Computereffekte einen riesigen Sprung gemacht. Und trotzdem setzt „Beetlejuice 2“ primär auf praktische Effekte – was einen Großteil seines Charmes ausmacht.

FILMSTARTS.de

Patrick Johanneson 🚀 🇨🇦May 2, 2024

#bombast

Céline Dion

30%

Meat Loaf

30%

Céline Dion ft. Meat Loaf

40%

Poll ended at May 3, 2024 at 4:23am.

Rev. Dr. Sir Wayne Murillo III Jul 4, 2023

"What, to the #American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross #injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a #sham; your boasted #liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling #vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of #tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere #bombast, #fraud, #deception, #impiety, and #hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these #UnitedStates, at this very hour."