A man trusts his ears less than his eyes.

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

But if you know that you are a man too, and that even such are those that rule, learn this first of all: that all human affairs are a wheel which, as it turns, does not allow the same men always to be fortunate.

Envy is so natural to human kind, that it cannot but arise.

If an important decision is to be made, they [the Persians] discuss the question when they are drunk, and the following day the master of the house where the discussion was held submits their decision for reconsideration when they are sober. If they still approve it, it is adopted; if not, it is abandoned. Conversely, any decision they make when they are sober, is reconsidered afterwards when they are drunk.

Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.

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.