If you are a friend, why do you bite me so hard? If an enemy, why do you fawn on me?
If you wish me well, do not stand pitying me, but lend me some succour as fast as you can; for pity is but cold comfort when one is up to the chin in water, and within a hair's breadth of starving or drowning.
Adversity tests the sincerity of friends
It is easier to become entangled with an enemy than to disentangle oneself afterwards.
Never trust advice from a man in the throes of his own difficulty.
There are many statues of men slaying lions, but if only the lions were sculptors there might be quite a different set of statues.