Q0387

Horace

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

They change their sky, not their soul, who rush across the sea.
Thinker Horace
School Roman Literary Thought
Source Epistles I.11.27
Theme Life
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Epistles I.11.27, within the tradition of Roman Literary Thought. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of life, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Horace's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Horace. (n.d.). They change their sky, not their soul, who rush across the sea. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0387

MLA: Horace. “They change their sky, not their soul, who….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0387.

Chicago: Horace. “They change their sky, not their soul, who….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0387.

Same thinker

More from Horace

  1. Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in tomorrow.
  2. He who has begun has half done.

All quotations by Horace

Same theme

More on life

  1. The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.
  2. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.
  3. Leisure without study is death — a tomb for a living man.
  4. A free man thinks of nothing less than of death; and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.
  5. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Browse the life theme