The talkative listen to no one, for they are ever speaking. And the first evil that attends those who know not to be silent is that they hear nothing.

The first man . . . ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds?

Prosperity is no just scale; adversity is the only balance to weigh friends.

Education and study, and the favors of the muses, confer no greater benefit on those that seek them than these humanizing and civilizing lessons, which teach our natural qualities to submit to the limitations prescribed by reason, and to avoid the wildness of extremes.

Anger turns the mind out of doors and bolts the entrance.

Poverty is not dishonorable in itself, but only when it comes from idleness, intemperance, extravagance, and folly.

Nature without learning is blind, learning apart from nature is fractional, and practice in the absence of both is aimless.