Philosophy finds talkativeness a disease very difficult and hard to cure. For its remedy, conversation, requires hearers: but talkative people hear n….

Seeing the lightest and gayest purple was then most in fashion, he would always wear that which was the nearest black; and he would often go out of d….

Reason speaks and feeling bites.

God alone is entirely exempt from all want of human virtues, that which needs least is the most absolute and divine..

Ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting solidity or exactness of beauty..

Fate, however, is to all appearance more unavoidable than unexpected..

A Locanian having plucked all the feathers off from a nightingale and seeing what a little body it had, "surely," quoth he, "thou art all voice and n….

By the study of their biographies, we receive each man as a guest into our minds, and we seem to understand their character as the result of a person….

When one is transported by rage, it is best to observe attentively the effects on those who deliver themselves over to the same passion..

I am whatever was, or is, or will be; and my veil no mortal ever took up..

Athenodorus says hydrophobia, or water-dread, was first discovered in the time of Asclepiades..

When Eudæmonidas heard a philosopher arguing that only a wise man can be a good general, "This is a wonderful speech," said he; "but he that saith it….

Poverty is never dishonourable in itself, but only when it is a mark of sloth, intemperance, extravagance, or thoughtlessness. When, on the other han….

Nothing made the horse so fat as the king's eye..

Empire may be gained by gold, not gold by empire. It used, indeed, to be a proverb that "It is not Philip, but Philip's gold that takes the cities of….

Custom is almost a second nature..

When one told Plistarchus that a notorious railer spoke well of him, "I'll lay my life," said he, "somebody hath told him I am dead, for he can speak….

Real excellence, indeed, is most recognized when most openly looked into..

Rome was in the most dangerous inclination to change on account of the unequal distribution of wealth and property, those of highest rank and greates….

They fought indeed and were slain, but it was to maintain the luxury and the wealth of other men..

Good fortune will elevate even petty minds, and give them the appearance of a certain greatness and stateliness, as from their high place they look d….