What is harder than rock? What is softer than water? Yet hard rocks are hollowed out by soft water?
When in fear, it is safest to force the attack.
A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle unless there be two.
The courts of kings are full of people, but empty of friends.
No one is better born than another, unless they are born with better abilities and a more amiable disposition.
True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing.
Malice drinks one-half of its own poison.
There’s some end at last for the man who follows a path; mere rambling is interminable.
All art is an imitation of nature.
Know this, that he that is a friend to himself, is a friend to all men.
It is not manly to turn one’s back on fortune.
If you wish to fear nothing, consider that everything is to be feared.
Add each day something to fortify you against poverty and death.
It is for the superfluous things of life that men sweat.
The mind is slow to unlearn what it learnt early.
The great soul surrenders itself to fate.
Fortune reveres the brave, and overwhelms the cowardly.
No man will swim ashore and take his baggage with him.
It is not death we fear, but the thought of it.
For the great benefits of our being- our life, health, and reason-we look upon ourselves.
Sometimes people can surprise you. Sometimes they have a great capacity to hear the truth.