The aim of the poet is to inform or delight, or to combine together, in what he says, both pleasure and applicability to life. In instructing, be brief in what you say in order that your readers may grasp it quickly and retain it faithfully. Superfluous words simply spill out when the mind is already full. Fiction invented in order to please should remain close to reality.

Dare to begin! He who postpones living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.

Poverty urges us to do and suffer anything that we may escape from it, and so leads us away from virtue.

One gains universal applause who mingles the useful with the agreeable, at once delighting and instructing the reader.

Superfluous advice is not retained by the full mind.

The foolish are like ripples on water, For whatsoever they do is quickly effaced; But the righteous are like carvings upon stone, For their smallest act is durable.

Be ever on your guard what you say of anybody and to whom.