“All of life is action and passion, and not to be involved in the actions and passions of your time is to risk having not really lived at all.”

Those who are guided by reason are generally successful in their plans; those who are rash and precipitate seldom enjoy the favour of the gods.

But if you know that you are a man too, and that even such are those that rule, learn this first of all: that all human affairs are a wheel which, as it turns, does not allow the same men always to be fortunate.

I know that human happiness never remains long in the same place.

Call no man happy before he dies.

The sun will not shine on any country that has borders with ours.

It is a law of nature that fainthearted men should be the fruit of luxurious countries, for we never find that the same soil produces delicacies and heroes.

One should always look to the end of everything, how it will finally come out. For the god has shown blessedness to many only to overturn them utterly in the end.

History is marked by alternating movements across the imaginary line that separates East from West in Eurasia.

Envy is so natural to human kind, that it cannot but arise.

If you have two loaves of bread, keep one to nourish the body, but sell the other to buy hyacinths for the soul.

Remember that with her clothes a woman puts off her modesty.

A multitude of rulers is not a good thing. Let there be one ruler, one king.

Dreams in general take their rise from those incidents which have most occupied the thoughts during the day.

Some give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before.

Unless a variety of opinions are laid before us, we have no opportunity of selection, but are bound of necessity to adopt the particular view which may have been brought forward.

The man who has planned badly, if fortune is on his side, may have had a stroke of luck; but his plan was a bad one nonetheless.