“To be rather than to seem.”

For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.

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.