Everything that is hard to attain is easily assailed by the generality of men.

Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the earth.

The length of life takes the leading place among inquiries about events following birth.

As material fortune is associated with the properties of the body, so honor belongs to those of the soul.

Therefore the solid body of the earth is reasonably considered as being the largest relative to those moving against it and as remaining unmoved in any direction by the force of the very small weights, and as it were absorbing their fall. And if it had some one common movement, the same as that of the other weights, it would clearly leave them all behind because of its much greater magnitude. And the animals and other weights would be left hanging in the air, and the earth would very quickly fallout of the heavens. Merely to conceive such things makes them appear ridiculous.

There’s an inherent message in my work relating to recycling and the nature of value, but my artistic inspiration is fired by the qualities within the raw materials… I come across many things which have been abandoned and find something more in them than their intrinsic worthlessness.

There are three classes of friendship and enmity, since men are so disposed to one another either by preference or by need or by pleasure and pain.