Let parents who hate their offspring rear them to hate labor, and to inherit riches; and before long they will be stung by every vice, racked by its poison, and damned by its penalty.

Death? Translated into the heavenly tongue, that word means life!

The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.

At the bottom of every leaf-stem is a cradle, and in it is an infant germ; the winds will rock it, the birds will sing to it all summer long, but the next season it will unfold and go alone.

Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right use of strength.

The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game.

No cradle for an emperor's child was ever prepared with so much magnificence as this world has been made for man. But it is only his cradle.