“The wise man sets bounds even to his innocent desires.”

A lucky man is rarer than a white crow.

Is it a simple form of madness to lose a hundred thousand sesterces, and not have a shirt to give to a shivering slave?

Where talent is lacking, anger writes poetry.

This precept descended from Heaven: know thyself.

Vice can deceive under the guise and shadow of virtue.

Every great house is full of haughty servants.

Many commit the same crime with a very different result. One bears a cross for his crime; another a crown.

The love of money grows as the money itself grows.

Some men make fortunes, but not to enjoy them for, blinded by avarice, they live to make fortunes.

Luxury is more deadly than any foe.

No one rejoices more in revenge than woman.

There is nothing worse than words of kindness that lie.

Who will watch the watchers?

Give up all hope of peace so long as your mother-in-law is alive.

It is not easy for men to rise whose qualities are thwarted by poverty.

Dare to do things worthy of imprisonment if you mean to be of consequence.

Emptiness is bound to bloom, like hundreds of grasses blossoming.

The lapse of ages changes all things – time, language, the earth, the bounds of the sea, the stars of the sky, and every thing about, around, and underneath man, except man himself.

The rigid cause themselves to be broken; the pliable cause themselves to be bound.

If it is the dirty element that gives pleasure to the act of lust, then the dirtier it is, the more pleasurable it is bound to be.

Books are a hard-bound drug with no danger of an overdose. I am the happy victim of books.

The fate of nations is intimately bound up with their powers of reproduction. All nations and all empires first felt decadence gnawing at them when their birth rate fell off.

The only limits of power are the bounds of belief.

Remember the lessons of history – if we don’t learn from history, we’re bound to repeat it.