Idleness is a great enemy to mankind. There is no friend like energy, for, if you cultivate that, it will never fail.

Kindness can turn the bad man's heart, and fools convert to wise, Make poison into nectar-juice, and friends of enemies.

Trees loaded with fruit are bent down; the clouds when charged with fresh rain hang down near the earth: even so good men are not uplifted through prosperity. Such is the natural character of the liberal.

Those from whom we were born have long since departed, and those with whom we grew up exist only in memory. We, too, through the approach of death, become, as it were, trees growing on the sandy bank of a river.

Idleness is a great enemy to mankind. There is no friend like energy, for, if you cultivate that, it will never fail.

A good man may fall, but he falls like a ball [and rebounds]; the ignoble man falls like a lump of clay.

The constant man loses not his virtue in misfortune. A torch may point towards the ground, but its flame will still point upwards.