There is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others.

What a man hates, he takes seriously.

Socrates ... brought human wisdom back down from heaven, where she was wasting her time, and restored her to man.... It is impossible to go back further and lower. He did a great favor to human nature by showing how much it can do by itself.

I do not know whether I would not like much better to have produced one perfectly formed child by intercourse with the muses than by intercourse with my wife.

Virtue shuns ease as a companion. It demands a rough and thorny path.

A good marriage ... is a sweet association in life: full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of useful and solid services and mutual obligations.

We call comeliness a mischance in the first respect, which belongs principally to the face.