All men who would surpass the other animals should do their best not to pass through life silently like the beasts whom nature made prone, obedient to their bellies.

Deliberate before you begin; but, having carefully done so, execute with vigour.

Everything rises but to fall, and increases but to decay.

One can ever assume to be what he is not, and to conceal what he is.

Advise well before you begin, and when you have maturely considered, then act with promptitude.

The fame that goes with wealth and beauty is fleeting and fragile; intellectual superiority is a possession glorious and eternal.

Now the myths represent the Gods themselves and the goodness of the Gods subject always to the distinction of the speakable and the unspeakable, the revealed and the unrevealed, that which is clear and that which is hidden: since, just as the Gods have made the goods of sense common to all, but those of intellect only to the wise, so the myths state the existence of Gods to all, but who and what they are only to those who can understand.