Power exercised with violence has seldom been of long duration...
We are born to lose and to perish, to hope and to fear, to vex ourselves and others; and there is no antidote against a common calamity but virtue; for the foundation of true joy is in the conscience.
Men love their vices and hate them at the same time.
Lay hold of today’s task, and you will not depend so much upon tomorrow’s.
He worships God who knows him.
Let wickedness escape as it may at the bar, it never fails of doing justice upon itself; for every guilty person is his own hangman.
Let not the enjoyment of pleasures now within your grasp, be carried to such excess as to incapacitate you from future repetition.
Whatever fortune has raised to a height, she has raised only to cast it down.
Every reign must submit to a greater reign.
He who has made a fair compact with poverty is rich.
It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, – superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.
Everything that exceeds the bounds of moderation has an unstable foundation.
Money has never yet made anyone rich.
Principles are like seeds; they are little things which do much good, if the mind that receives them has the right attitudes.
We are more wicked together than separately. If you are forced to be in a crowd, then most of all you should withdraw into yourself.
Time is the one thing that is given to everyone in equal measure.
Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well-ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.
It should be our care not so much to live a long life as a satisfactory one.
Fire tests gold, suffering tests brave men.
But when you are looking on anyone as a friend when you do not trust him as you trust yourself, you are making a grave mistake, and have failed to grasp sufficiently the full force of true friendship.