“Nothing cruel is in fact beneficial; for cruelty is extremely hostile to the nature of man, which we ought to follow.”

Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either.

To be content with what we possess is the greatest and most secure of riches.

The closer the collapse of the Empire, the crazier its laws are.

Never injure a friend, even in jest.

Freedom will bite back more fiercely when suspended than when she remains undisturbed.

Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.

Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body.

We must not only obtain Wisdom: we must enjoy her.

We must not say every mistake is a foolish one.

Kindness is stronger than fear.

It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.

Ability without honor is useless.

A friend is a second self.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

Time obliterates the fictions of opinion and confirms the decisions of nature.

I criticize by creation, not by finding fault.

By a lie a man throws away and as it were annihilates his dignity as a man.

Nietzsche said that a man’s worth was determined by how much truth he could tolerate.

It is not without cause that men feel the burden of their existence, though they are themselves the cause of those burdens.

Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself.

A man’s worldly success will be in the measure that he sacrifices his confused animal thoughts.

Man dies constantly until the moment of his demise.

Man’s greatest joy is to slay his enemy, plunder his riches, ride his steeds, see the tears of his loved ones and embrace his women.

Just as God gave different fingers to the hand so has He given different ways to men.