A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.

Try to become not a man of success, but try rather to become a man of value.

If you make an ass out of yourself, there will always be someone to ride you.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.

Put every great teacher together in a room, and they'd agree about everything; put their disciples in there and they'd argue about everything.

Could I climb to the highest place in Athens, I would lift my voice and proclaim, "Fellow citizens, why do you turn and scrape every stone to gather wealth, and take so little care of your children to whom one day you must relinquish it all?"

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.

He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.

Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.

Death is the release from all pain and complete cessation, beyond which our suffering will not follow. It will return us to that condition of tranquility, which we had enjoyed before we were born. Should anyone mourn the deceased, then he must also mourn the unborn.

He who walks straight rarely falls.

Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him?

History is full of people who out of fear, or ignorance, or lust for power have destroyed knowledge of immeasurable value which truly belongs to us all. We must not let it happen again.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

When it is darkest, men see the stars.

Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so.

There ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.

Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.

What the superior man seeks is in himself; What the mean man seeks is in others.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.