“Never injure a friend, even in jest.”

Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so.

The countenance is the portrait of the soul, and the eyes mark its intention.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war.

The life of the dead is placed on the memories of the living. The love you gave in life keeps people alive beyond their time. Anyone who was given love will always live on in another’s heart.

For the whole life of a philosopher is, as the same philosopher says, a meditation on death.

The shifts of fortune test the reliability of friends.

It is our own evil thoughts which madden us.

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

Old age: the crown of life, our play’s last act.

When you are aspiring to the highest place, it is honorable to reach the second or even the third rank.

Politicians are not born; they are excreted.

A mental stain can neither be blotted out by the passage of time nor washed away by any waters.

Our span of life is brief, but is long enough for us to live well and honestly.

In times of war, the law falls silent.

A mind without instruction can no more bear fruit than can a field, however fertile, without cultivation.

We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.

Under the magnetism of friendship the modest man becomes bold; the shy, confident; the lazy, active; and the impetuous, prudent and peaceful.

Friendships are discovered rather than made.

O innocence, how glorious and happy a portion art thou to the breast that possesses thee! thou fearest neither the eyes nor the tongues of men. Truth, the most powerful of all things, is thy strongest friend; and the brighter the light is in which thou art displayed, the more it discovers thy transcendent beauties.

You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends.

All I needed was a friend to lend a guiding hand. But you turned into a lover, and mother what a lover, you wore me out.

Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.

The truth is the kindest thing we can give folks in the end.