Our character is not so much the product of race and heredity as of those circumstances by which nature forms our habits, by which we are nurtured and live.

Before beginning, plan carefully.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

I am not ashamed to confess that I am ignorant of what I do not know.

Even if you have nothing to write, write and say so.

A home without books is a body without soul.

Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.

Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.

Our character is not so much the product of race and heredity as of those circumstances by which nature forms our habits, by which we are nurtured and live.

A friend is, as it were, a second self.

There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.

Peace is liberty in tranquillity.

What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation?

Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.

Glory follows virtue as if it were its shadow.

To live is to think.

The eyes like sentinel occupy the highest place in the body.

The long time to come when I shall not exist has more effect on me than this short present time, which nevertheless seems endless.

The best interpreter of the law is custom.

Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system.

The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk.

What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes.

Old age: the crown of life, our play's last act.

I never admire another's fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.

The rule of friendship means there should be mutual sympathy between them, each supplying what the other lacks and trying to benefit the other, always using friendly and sincere words.

In a disordered mind, as in a disordered body, soundness of health is impossible.

The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.

I add this, that rational ability without education has oftener raised man to glory and virtue, than education without natural ability.

He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.

Empire and liberty.

What is thine is mine, and all mine is thine.

In so far as the mind is stronger than the body, so are the ills contracted by the mind more severe than those contracted by the body.

One who sees the Supersoul accompanying the individual soul in all bodies and who understands that neither the soul nor the Supersoul is ever destroyed, actually sees.

Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.

To some extent I liken slavery to death.

True glory takes root, and even spreads; all false pretences, like flowers, fall to the ground; nor can any counterfeit last long.

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

The more laws, the less justice.

Hatreds not vowed and concealed are to be feared more than those openly declared.

Laws are silent in time of war.

Love is the attempt to form a friendship inspired by beauty.

When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.

Never injure a friend, even in jest.

The false is nothing but an imitation of the true.

I never heard of an old man forgetting where he had buried his money! Old people remember what interests them: the dates fixed for their lawsuits, and the names of their debtors and creditors.

Brevity is the best recommendation of speech, whether in a senator or an orator.

Nothing is so strongly fortified that it cannot be taken by money.

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

A tear dries quickly when it is shed for troubles of others.