Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.

Silence is a profound melody, for those who can hear it above all the noise.

If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.

Are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul?

And the same things look bent and straight when seen in water and out of it, and also both concave and convex, due to the sight's being mislead by the colors, and every sort of confusion of this kind is plainly in our soul. And, then, it is because they take advantage of this affection in our nature that shadow painting, and puppeteering, and many other tricks of the kind fall nothing short of wizardry.

Creation is man's immortality and brings him nearest to the gods.

The first key to greatness is to be in reality what we appear to be.