Immoderate grief is selfish, harmful, brings no advantage to either the mourner or the mourned, and dishonors the dead.
I have heard that Tiberius used to say that that man was ridiculous, who after sixth years, appealed to a physician.
A remorseful change of mind renders even a noble action base, whereas the determination which is grounded on knowledge and reason cannot change even if its actions fail.
He who first called money the sinews of the state seems to have said this with special reference to war.
Why does pouring Oil on the Sea make it Clear and Calm? Is it that the winds, slipping the smooth oil, have no force, nor cause any waves?
Wickedness is a wonderfully diligent architect of misery, of shame, accompanied with terror, and commotion, and remorse, and endless perturbation.
It is no flattery to give a friend a due character; for commendation is as much the duty of a friend as reprehension.
The usual disease of princes, grasping covetousness, had made them suspicious and quarrelsome neighbors.
It is the usual consolation of the envious, if they cannot maintain their superiority, to represent those by whom they are surpassed as inferior to some one else.
Poverty is not dishonorable in itself, but only when it comes from idleness, intemperance, extravagance, and folly.
Water and our necessary food are the only things that wise men must fight for.
Fate, however, is to all appearance more unavoidable than unexpected.
Nor is drunkenness censured for anything so much as its intemperate and endless talk.
Caesar’s wife should be above suspicion.
The crowns of kings do not prevent those who wear them from being tormented sometimes by violent headaches.
What most of all enables a man to serve the public is not wealth, but content and independence; which, requiring no superfluity at home, distracts not the mind from the common good.
Speech is like cloth of Arras opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as packs.
A Spartan woman, as she handed her son his shield, exhorted him saying, “As a warrior of Sparta come back with your shield or on it.”
He who busies himself in mean occupations, produces in the very pains he takes about things of little or no use, an evidence against himself of his negligence and indisposition to what is really good.
The most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men.