Since, during storms, flames leap from the humid vapors and dark clouds emit deafening noises, is it surprising the lightning, when it strikes the ground, gives rise to truffles, which do not resemble plants?

Friendship requires a steady, constant, and unchangeable character, a person that is uniform in his intimacy.

Mothers ought to bring up and nurse their own children; for they bring them up with greater affection and with greater anxiety, as loving them from the heart, and so to speak, every inch of them.

It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such a one as is unworthy of him; for the one is only belief - the other contempt.

The man who first brought ruin upon the Roman people was he who pampered them by largesses and amusements.

Most people do not understand until old age what Plato tells them when they are young.

This excerpt is presented as reproduced by Copernicus in the preface to De Revolutionibus: "Some think that the earth remains at rest. But Philolaus the Pythagorean believes that, like the sun and moon, it revolves around the fire in an oblique circle. Heraclides of Pontus and Ecphantus the Pythagorean make the earth move, not in a progressive motion, but like a wheel in rotation from west to east around its own center."