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.
Lamentation is the only musician that always, like a screech-owl, alights and sits on the roof of any angry man.
One made the observation of the people of Asia that they were all slaves to one man, merely because they could not pronounce that syllable No.
Remember what Simonides said, that he never repented that he had held his tongue, but often that he had spoken.
Cicero called Aristotle a river of flowing gold, and said of Plato’s Dialogues, that if Jupiter were to speak, it would be in language like theirs.
Spintharus, speaking in commendation of Epaminondas, says he scarce ever met with any man who knew more and spoke less.
Extraordinary rains pretty generally fall after great battles.
Lysander said that the law spoke too softly to be heard in such a noise of war.
Children ought to be led to honorable practices by means of encouragement and reasoning, and most certainly not by blows and ill treatment.
Blinded as they are to their true character by self-love, every man is his own first and chiefest flatterer, prepared, therefore, to welcome the flatterer from the outside, who only comes confirming the verdict of the flatterer within.
If Nature be not improved by instruction, it is blind; if instruction be not assisted by Nature, it is maimed; and if exercise fail of the assistance of both, it is imperfect.
Wickedness frames the engines of her own torment. She is a wonderful artisan of a miserable life.
Had I a careful and pleasant companion that should show me my angry face in a glass, I should not at all take it ill; to behold man’s self so unnaturally disguised and dishonored will conduce not a little to the impeachment of anger.
Anger turns the mind out of doors and bolts the entrance.
Pompey bade Sylla recollect that more worshipped the rising than the setting sun.
For it was not so much that by means of words I came to a complete understanding of things, as that from things I somehow had an experience which enabled me to follow the meaning of words.
The belly has no ears.
To please the many is to displease the wise.
If you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind that it will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you.
The first evil those who are prone to talk suffer, is that they hear nothing.
But the Lacedaemonians, who make it their first principle of action to serve their country’s interest, know not any thing to be just or unjust by any measure but that.