A mind without instruction can no more bear fruit than can a field, however fertile, without cultivation.

The first bond of society is the marriage tie; the next our children; then the whole family of our house, and all things in common.

It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.

Let every man practise the trade which he best understands.

It is foolish to tear one's hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.

The man who backbites an absent friend, nay, who does not stand up for him when another blames him, the man who angles for bursts of laughter and for the repute of a wit, who can invent what he never saw, who cannot keep a secret -- that man is black at heart: mark and avoid him.

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.