To think well and to consent to obey someone giving good advice are the same thing.

A man calumniated is doubly injured -- first by him who utters the calumny, and then by him who believes it.

Those who are skilled in archery bend their bow only when they are preparing to use it; when they do not require it, they allow it to remain unbent, for otherwise it would remain unserviceable when the time for using it arrived. So it is with man. If he were to devote himself unceasingly to a dull round of business, without breaking the monotony by cheerful amusements, he would fall imperceptibly into idiocy, or be struck by paralysis

The most hateful grief of all human griefs is to have knowledge of a truth, but no power over the event.

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.

All of life is action and passion, and not to be involved in the actions and passions of your time is to risk having not really lived at all.

It is sound planning that invariably earns us the outcome we want; without it, even the gods are unlikely to look with favour on our designs.