The sweetest things become the most bitter by excess.

Men find happiness neither by means of the body nor through possessions, but through uprightness and wisdom.

Everywhere man blames nature and fate yet his fate is mostly but the echo of his character and passion, his mistakes and his weaknesses.

Magnanimity consists in enduring tactlessness with mildness.

Whatever a poet writes with enthusiasm and a divine inspiration is very fine. Earliest reference to the madness or divine inspiration of poets.

Now as of old the gods give men all good things, excepting only those that are baneful and injurious and useless. These, now as of old, are not gifts of the gods: men stumble into them themselves because of their own blindness and folly.

Men should strive to think much and know little.