The man who has planned badly, if fortune is on his side, may have had a stroke of luck; but his plan was a bad one nonetheless.

Egypt is the gift of the Nile.

These 'messengers' will not be hindered from accomplishing at their best speed the distance which they have to go, either by snow, or rain, or heat, or by the darkness of night.

If someone were to put a proposition before men bidding them choose, after examination, the best customs in the world, each nation would certainly select its own

I never yet feared those men who set a place apart in the middle of their cities where they gather to cheat one another and swear oaths which they break.

This king [Sesostris] divided the land among all Egyptians so as to give each one a quadrangle of equal size and to draw from each his revenues, by imposing a tax to be levied yearly. But everyone from whose part the river tore anything away, had to go to him to notify what had happened; he then sent overseers who had to measure out how much the land had become smaller, in order that the owner might pay on what was left, in proportion to the entire tax imposed. In this way, it appears to me, geometry originated, which passed thence to Hellas.

There is nothing more foolish, nothing more given to outrage than a useless mob.