“The world wills itself to be deceived, so let it be deceived.”

A man who is always ready to believe what is told him will never do well, especially a businessman.

Leave your home, O youth, and seek out alien shores. A wider range of life has been ordained for you.

Everyone will find what he’s looking for. Nothing pleases everyone: this man gathers thorns, that one roses.

While fortune lasts you will see your friend’s face.

Outward beauty is not enough; to be attractive a woman must use words, wit, playfulness, sweet-talk, and laughter to transcend the gifts of nature.

The world wants to be deceived.

The mind longs for what it has missed.

Wisdom and beauty form a very rare combination.

A physician is nothing but a consoler of the mind.

A doctor is nothing more than consolation for the spirit.

He has gone over to the majority.

Heaven is equally distant everywhere.

Nothing is falser than people’s preconceptions and ready-made opinions; nothing is sillier than their sham morality.

Can’t you see that I’m only advising you to beg yourself not to be so dumb

What power has law where only money rules?

Beauty and wisdom are rarely conjoined.

Love may be likened to a disease in this respect, that when it is denied a vent in one part, it will certainly break out in another; hence what a woman’s lips often conceal, her eyes, her blushes, and many little involuntary actions betray.

Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect.

Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I’d always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals come easily.

Though we may not desire to detect fraud, we must not, on that account, endeavor to be insensible of it, for, as cunning is a crime, so is duplicity a fault, and if men dread knaves, they also despise fools.

The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.

Be sure that you are not deceiving yourself at any time about actual conditions.

They (low-minded) ones should never be trusted.

Do not put your trust in a bad companion nor even trust an ordinary friend, for if he should get angry with you, he may bring all your secrets to light.