Great Throughts Treasury

"You please nobody when you condemn everybody."

"Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise."

"When someone praises you, be judge alone: trust not men's judgment of you, but your own."

"We cannot control the evil tongues of others; but a good life enables us to disregard them."

"To succeed in the world, it is much more necessary to possess the penetration to discover who is a fool than to discover who is a clever man."

"Those who are serious in ridiculous matters will be ridiculous in serious matters."

"The worst ruler is the one who cannot rule himself."

"There is no goodness without badness."

"Nobody lives without faults."

"The wise man does not wrong in changing his habits with the times."

"Some men are more beholden to their bitterest enemies than to friends who appear to be sweetness itself. The former frequently tell the truth, but the latter never."

"Greatest of human virtues is always patience."

"He is nearest to the gods who knows how to be silent."

"Men by doing nothing learn to do evil."

"Believe nothing rashly."

"Before you accuse another, take a look at your own life."

"A benefit slips from the mind, an injury endures."

"Avoid the clash of inconsistency: who fights with self, with no one will agree."

"An angry man opens his mouth and shuts up his eyes."

"Despise riches if you would have a happy mind."

"Cessation of work is not accompanied by cessation of expenses."

"Good-breeding is the art of showing men, by external signs, the internal regard we have for them. It arises from good sense, improved by conversing with good company."

"He who fears death, though living, loses life itself."

"Hope alone does not desert man, even in death."

"Human life is very like iron. If you use it, it wears out; if you do not, it is consumed by rust."

"Labor builds up strength, but long idleness destroys it... Labor often dries the tear and brings happiness."

"If you are ruled by mind, you are king; if by body a slave."

"Speech is the gift of all, but thought of few."

"The first virtue is, I think, to rule the tongue."

"The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it."

"We have a keener appetite for the new than grasp of the old."

"Anger so clouds the mind, that it cannot perceive the truth."

"From lightest words sometimes the direst quarrel springs."

"It is a difficult matter to argue with the belly since it has no ears."

"Old age has deformities enough of its own. It should never add to them the deformity of vice."

"I think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to gods who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right."

"Self-praise and self-depreciation are alike absurd."

"An angry man opens his mouth and shuts his eyes."

"Speech is the gift of all, but the thought of few."

"Those who are serious in ridiculous matters will be ridiculous in serious matters."

"Cessation of work is not accompanied by cessation of expenses."