They who say that we should love our fellow-citizens but not foreigners, destroy the universal brotherhood of mankind, with which benevolence and justice would perish forever.

Now in regard to trades and other means of livelihood, which ones are to be considered becoming to a gentleman and which ones are vulgar, we have been taught, in general, as follows. First, those means of livelihood are rejected as undesirable which incur people's ill-will, as those of tax-gatherers and usurers. Unbecoming to a gentleman, too, and vulgar are the means of livelihood of all hired workmen whom we pay for mere manual labour, not for artistic skill; for in their case the very wage they receive is a pledge of their slavery.

Nothing is so secure as that money will not defeat it.

To some extent I liken slavery to death.

For nothing is more commendable, nothing more becoming in a preeminently great man than courtesy and forbearance.

Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.

It is the act of a bad man to deceive by falsehood.