How much better a thing it is to be envied than to be pitied.

One should always look to the end of everything, how it will finally come out. For the god has shown blessedness to many only to overturn them utterly in the end.

We are less convinced by what we hear than by what we see.

It [Egypt] has more wonders in it than any other country in the world and provides more works that defy description than any otherplace.

Where even a falsehood must be told, let it be told.

Calumny is a monstrous vice: for, where parties indulge in it, there are always two that are actively engaged in doing wrong, and one who is subject to injury. The calumniator inflicts wrong by slandering the absent; he who gives credit to the calumny before he has investigated the truth is equally implicated. The person traduced is doubly injured--first by him who propagates, and secondly by him who credits the calumny.

But this I know: if all mankind were to take their troubles to market with the idea of exchanging them, anyone seeing what his neighbor's troubles were like would be glad to go home with his own.