Genuine is the sorrow endured without anyone else knowing about it.

All your female friends are either old or ugly; nay, more ugly than old women usually are. These you lead about in your train, and drag with you to feasts, porticos and theaters. Thus, Fabulla, you seem handsome, thus you seem young.

I seem to you cruel and too much addicted to gluttony, when I beat my cook for sending up a bad dinner. If that appears to you too trifling a cause, say for what cause you would have a cook flogged.

If my opinion is of any worth, the fieldfare is the greatest delicacy among birds, the hare among quadrupeds.

If you have any shame, forbear to pluck the beard of a dead lion.

If your slave commits a fault, do not smash his teeth with your fists; give him some of the (hard) biscuit which famous Rhodes has sent you.

You ask what a nice girl will do? She won't give an inch, but she won't say no.