One ought not to return injustice, nor do evil to anybody in the world, no matter what one may have suffered from them.

There are beds and tables in the world - plenty of them, are there not? But there are only two ideas or forms of them - one the idea of a bed, the other of a table.

I soon realized that poets do not compose their poems with knowledge, but by some inborn talent and by inspiration, like seers and prophets who also say many fine things without any understanding of what they say.

He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.

The years wrinkle our skin, but lack of enthusiasm wrinkles our soul.

[N]either in war nor yet at law ought any man to use every way of escaping death. For often in battle there is no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death; and in other dangers there are other ways of escaping death, if a man is willing to say and do anything. The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death.

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.