If you are poor now, Aemilianus, you will always be poor. Riches are now given to none but the rich.

There is nothing more revolting than an old busybody.

He who writes distichs, wishes, I suppose, to please by brevity. But, tell me, of what avail is their brevity, when there is a whose book full of them?

Red-haired, black-lipped, club-footed, and blink-eyed; if you're a good man, you're a wonder!

What's a wretched man? A man whom no man pleases.

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.

Be content to be what you are, and prefer nothing to it, and do not fear or wish for your last day.