It is not fair to treat as serious that which is only said in joke.

For I know that many good things have happened to many, when least expected; and that many hopes have been disappointed.

If anything is spoken in jest, it is not fair to turn it to earnest.

Give assistance, and receive thanks lighter than a feather: injure a man, and his wrath will be like lead.

For enemies carry about slander not in the form in which it took its rise . The scandal of men is everlasting; even then does it survive when you would suppose it to be dead.

Man is not man, but a wolf to those he does not know.

Besides that, when elsewhere the harvest of wheat is most abundant, there it comes up less by one-fourth than what you have sowed. There, methinks, it were a proper place for men to sow their wild oats, where they would not spring up.