The most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men.

Medicine to produce health must examine disease; and music, to create harmony must investigate discord.

Philosophy finds talkativeness a disease very difficult and hard to cure. For its remedy, conversation, requires hearers: but talkative people hear nobody, for they are ever prating. And the first evil this inability to keep silence produces is an inability to listen.

The human heart becomes softened by hearing of instances of gentleness and consideration.

So long as he was personally present, [Alcibiades] had the perfect mastery of his political adversaries; calumny only succeeded in his absence.

The worship most acceptable to God comes from a thankful and cheerful heart.

Solon being asked, namely, what city was best to live in. That city, he replied, in which those who are not wronged, no less than those who are wronged, exert themselves to punish the wrongdoers.