“Harmony makes small things grow; lack of it makes great things decay.”

But the case has proved that to be true which Appius says in his songs, that each man is the maker of his own fate.

The soul is the captain and ruler of the life of morals.

As the blessings of health and fortune have a beginning, so they must also find an end. Everything rises but to fall, and increases but to decay.

Ambition breaks the ties of blood, and forgets the obligations of gratitude.

But at power or wealth, for the sake of which wars, and all kinds of strife, arise among mankind, we do not aim; we desire only our liberty, which no honorable man relinquishes but with his life.

But few prize honour more than money.

The man who is roused neither by glory nor by danger it is in vain to exhort; terror closes the ears of the mind.

But assuredly Fortune rules in all things; she raised to eminence or buries in oblivion everything from caprice rather than from well-regulated principle.

To like and dislike the same things that is indeed true friendship.

To have the same desires and the same aversion is assuredly a firm bond of friendship.

Get good counsel before you begin; and when you have decided, act promptly.

Ambition drove many men to become false; to have one thought locked in the breast, another ready on the tongue.

It is sweet to surve one country by deeds, and it is not absurd to surve her by words.

Enough words, little wisdom.

Everything that rises sets, and everything that grows, grows old.

To someone seeking power, the poorest man is the most useful.

He who rejects change is the architect of decay.

Flee sloth; for the indolence of the soul is the decay of the body.

History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.

He who rejects change is the architect of decay.

Even if you make mistakes, I go back to those things, my not-so-great moments because those are my truest moments; those are my human moments. I’m not even mad at the things I said that were a little dicey.

Everything that makes diversity of kinds, of species, differences, properties… everything that consists in generation, decay, alteration and change is not an entity, but a condition and circumstance of entity and being, which is one, infinite, immobile, subject, matter, life, death, truth, lies, good and evil.

A debt may get mouldy, but it never decays.

The fertility cycle is a cycle entirely of living creatures passing again and again through birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay.