“He who thinks that the lives of Priam and of Nestor were long is much deceived and mistaken. Life consists not in living, but in enjoying health.”

You may envy every one, but no one envies you.

A good man doubles the length of his existence; to have lived so as to look back with pleasure on our past existence is to live twice.

The face that cannot smile is never fair.

Of no day can the retrospect cause pain to a good man.

Those they praise, but they read the others.

No amount of misfortune will satisfy the man who is not satisfied with reading a hundred epigrams.

If you are poor now, Aemilianus, you will always be poor. Riches are now given to none but the rich.

A good man enlarges the term of his own existence.

The bee is enclosed, and shines preserved in amber, so that it seems enshrined in its own nectar.

However great the dish that holds the turbot, the turbot is still greater than the dish.

Work divided is in that manner shortened.

He truly sorrows who sorrows unseen.

My poems are naughty, but my life is pure.

To-morrow I will live, the fool does say; To-day itself’s too late, the wise lived yesterday.

Every epigram should resemble a bee; it should have sting, honey, and brevity.

It is to live twice when we can enjoy the recollections of our former life.