Far better it is to have a stout heart always and suffer one's share of evils, than to be ever fearing what may happen.

Adversity has the effect of drawing out strength and qualities of a man that would have laid dormant in its absence.

In soft regions are born soft men.

How can a monarchy be a suitable thing, which allows a man to do as he pleases with none to hold him to account. And even if you were to take the best man on earth, and put him into a monarchy, you put outside him the thoughts that usually guide him.

Civil strife is as much a greater evil than a concerted war effort as war itself is worse than peace.

Force has no place where there is need of skill.

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.