Nothing made the horse so fat as the king’s eye.
Children are to be won to follow liberal studies by exhortations and rational motives, and on no account to be forced thereto by whipping.
The process may seem strange and yet it is very true. I did not so much gain the knowledge of things by the words, as words by the experience I had of things.
Where the lion’s skin will not reach, you must patch it out with the fox’s.
Proper listening is the foundation of proper living.
Most people do not understand until old age what Plato tells them when they are young.
As bees extract honey from thyme, the strongest and driest of herbs, so sensible men often get advantage and profit from the most awkward circumstances.
For the wise man, every day is a festival.
Abstruse questions must have abstruse answers.
Euripides was wont to say, silence was an answer to a wise man; but we seem to have greater occasion for it in our dealing with fools and unreasonable persons; for men of breeding and sense will be satisfied with reason and fair words.
Fortune had favoured me in this war that I feared, the rather, that some tempest would follow so favourable a gale.
The authors of great evils know best how to remove them.
What can they suffer that do not fear to die?
Talkativeness has another plague attached to it, even curiosity; for praters wish to hear much that they may have much to say.
We ought to regard books as we do sweetmeats, not wholly to aim at the pleasantest, but chiefly to respect the wholesomest; not forbidding either, but approving the latter most.
Riches for the most part are hurtful to them that possess them.
Whenever anything is spoken against you that is not true, do not pass by or despise it because it is false; but forthwith examine yourself, and consider what you have said or done that may administer a just occasion of reproof.
When one is transported by rage, it is best to observe attentively the effects on those who deliver themselves over to the same passion.
It is no disgrace not to be able to do everything; but to undertake, or pretend to do, what you are not made for, is not only shameful, but extremely troublesome and vexatious.
A friend should be like money, tried before being required, not found faulty in our need.