If true, the Pythagorean principles as to abstain from flesh, foster innocence; if ill-founded they at least teach us frugality, and what loss have you in losing your cruelty? It merely deprives you of the food of lions and vultures...let us ask what is best - not what is customary. Let us love temperance - let us be just - let us refrain from bloodshed.

It's the great soul that surrenders itself to fate, but a puny degenerate thing that struggles.

A foolishness is inflicted with a hatred of itself.

Let the man, who would be grateful, think of repaying a kindness, even while receiving it.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

Lightning will wreck its displeasures not only upon pillars, trees, and sheep, but upon altars and temples, and let the sacrilegious go free.

Conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insuating and insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor.