If a man could mount to Heaven and survey the mighty universe, his admiration of its beauties would be much diminished unless he had someone to share in his pleasure.
Socrates was the first to call philosophy down from the heavens and to place it in cities, and even to introduce it into homes and compel it to inquire about life and standards and goods and evils.
We cannot employ the mind to advantage when we are filled with excessive food and drink.
Books are the food of youth, the delight of old age; the ornament of prosperity, the refuge and comfort of adversity; a delight at home, and no hindrance abroad; companions by night, in traveling, in the country.
Guilt is present in the very hesitation, even though the deed be not committed.
No sober person dances.
All action is of the mind and the mirror of the mind is the face, its index the eyes.
It is a true saying that ‘one falsehood easily leads to another.’
Orators are most vehement when they have the weakest cause, as men get on horseback when they cannot walk.
He who acknowledges a kindness has it still, and he who has a grateful sense of it has requited it.
Inability to tell good from evil is the greatest worry of man’s life.
The celestial order and the beauty of the universe compel me to admit that there is some excellent and eternal Being, who deserves the respect and homage of men.
As I give thought to the matter, I find four causes for the apparent misery of old age; first it withdraws us from active accomplishments; second, it renders the body less powerful; third, it deprives us of almost all forms of enjoyment; fourth, it.
Nothing contributes to the entertainment of the reader more, than the change of times and the vicissitudes of fortune.
When a government becomes powerful it is destructive, extravagant and violent; it is an usurer which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honorable men of their substance, for votes with which to perpetuate itself.
Nothing so cements and holds together all the parts of a society as faith or credit, which can never be kept up unless men are under some force or necessity of honestly paying what they owe to one another.
My precept to all who build, is, that the owner should be an ornament to the house, and not the house to the owner.
It is not a virtue, but a deceptive copy and imitation of virtue, when we are led to the performance of duty by pleasure as its recompense.
Crimes are not to be measured by the issue of events, but by the bad intentions of men.
Leisure with dignity.