Horace on the ontological priority of ends over purposes

You can throw nature out with a pitchfork, but it always comes back,
and breaking in unexpectedly is victorious over your perverse contempt.

natura expellas furca, tamen usque recurret
et mala perrumpet furtim fastidia uictrix.

Horace, Epistles I.x.24-25, as translated by Francis Slade, in his "On the ontological priority of ends and its relevance to the narrative arts," in Beauty, art, and the polis, ed. Alice Ramos (Washington, DC:  American Maritain Association, 2000), 61 (58-69).  Latin from here.