A room without books is like a body without a soul.
Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century: 1. Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others; 2. Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected; 3. Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it; 4. Refusing to set aside trivial preferences; 5. Neglecting development and refinement of the mind; 6. Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
Circumstances don’t make the man, they only reveal him to himself.
It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.
The traitor rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.
Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.
We cannot control the evil tongues of others; but a good life enables us to disregard them.
Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life.
Where there’s life, there’s hope.
Don’t think, just do.
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
Constant dripping hollows out a stone.
He who fears death has already lost the life he covets.
Happy are those who dare courageously to defend what they love.
The haft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagles own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction.
To teach is a necessity, to please is a sweetness, to persuade is a victory.
The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing.
Every man, however wise, needs the advice of some sagacious friend in the affairs of life.
Fear is the foundation of safety.
Forgive many things in others; nothing in yourself.
Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own.
Give heed to the appearance of neighbourhoods, a flourishing country should show its prosperity.
Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together,but do so with all your heart.
Destroy the seed of evil, or it will grow up to your ruin.
The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.
Anger so clouds the mind that it cannot perceive the truth.
Love and dignity cannot share the same abode.
Buy not what you want, but what you have need of; that which you do not need is always expensive.
We are mad, not only individually but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders, but what of war and the much-vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples?
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
An angry man opens his mouth and shuts his eyes.
The public has more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
He that is discontented in one place will seldom be happy in another.
The day, water, sun, moon, night – I do not have to purchase these things with money.
When men are inhuman, take care not to feel towards them as they do towards other humans.
The happy life is a life that is in harmony with its own nature.
It is a difficult matter to argue with the belly since it has no ears.
Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties.
Freedom is the power to live as we choose.
No man pleases by silence; many I please by speaking briefly.
Knowledge which is divorced from justice may be called cunning rather than wisdom.
No one is so old as to think that he cannot live one more year.
