Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.
The gods too are fond of a joke.
The soul never thinks without a mental picture.
The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.
We must be neither cowardly nor rash but courageous.
To lead an orchestra, you must turn your back on the crowd.
The secret to humor is surprise
Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form, but with regard to their mode of life.
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.
Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are therir own.
In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.
Great men are always of a nature originally melancholy.
Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.
Wise men speak when they have something to say, fools speak because they have to say something.
Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, and a provision in old age.
All persons ought to endeavor to follow what is right, and not what is established.
He who cannot be a good follower cannot be a good leader.
Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies.
Without friends, no one would want to live, even if he had all other goods.
It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.
To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.
A friend is a second self.
We make war that we may live in peace.
Nature does nothing uselessly.
Happiness is a state of activity.
The more you know, the more you know you don't know.