“As the blessings of health and fortune have a beginning, so they must also find an end. Everything rises but to fall, and increases but to decay.”

Ambition breaks the ties of blood, and forgets the obligations of gratitude.

Harmony makes small things grow; lack of it makes great things decay.

But at power or wealth, for the sake of which wars, and all kinds of strife, arise among mankind, we do not aim; we desire only our liberty, which no honorable man relinquishes but with his life.

But few prize honour more than money.

The man who is roused neither by glory nor by danger it is in vain to exhort; terror closes the ears of the mind.

But assuredly Fortune rules in all things; she raised to eminence or buries in oblivion everything from caprice rather than from well-regulated principle.

To like and dislike the same things that is indeed true friendship.

To have the same desires and the same aversion is assuredly a firm bond of friendship.

Get good counsel before you begin; and when you have decided, act promptly.

Ambition drove many men to become false; to have one thought locked in the breast, another ready on the tongue.

It is sweet to surve one country by deeds, and it is not absurd to surve her by words.

Enough words, little wisdom.

Everything that rises sets, and everything that grows, grows old.

To someone seeking power, the poorest man is the most useful.

No grief reaches the dead.

By union the smallest states thrive. By discord the greatest are destroyed.

The fertility cycle is a cycle entirely of living creatures passing again and again through birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay.

Without publicity there can be no public support, and without public support every nation must decay.

There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt.

A society like ours, which professes no one religion and has allowed all religions to decay, which indulges freedom to the point of license and individualism to the point of anarchy, needs all the support that responsible, cultivated homes can furnish. I hope your generation will provide a firmer shelter for civilized standards.

Either you’re growing or you’re decaying; there’s no middle ground. If you’re standing still, you’re decaying.

We plainly perceive that the mind strengthens and decays with the body.

We notice that the mind grows with the body, and with it decays.

The human body is in constant change the minute we’re born. It’s in a constant state of decay. We’re all like Ford Escorts, just falling apart.