The great and amorous sky curved over the earth, and lay upon her as a pure lover. The rain, the humid flux descending from heaven for both man and animal, for both thick and strong, germinated the wheat, swelled the furrows with fecund mud and brought forth the buds in the orchards. And it is I who empowered these moist espousals, I the great Aphrodite.

O Death the Healer, scorn thou not, I pray, To come to me: of cureless ills thou art The one physician. Pain lays not its touch Upon a corpse.

Nothing forces us to know What we do not want to know Except pain

It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.

It is an easy thing for one whose foot is on the outside of calamity to give advice and to rebuke the sufferer.

There is a limit to the best of health, disease is always a near neighbor.

Death is easier than a wretched life; and better never to have born than to live and fare badly.