Nero may have understood how to tune his cithern, but he disgraced his imperial office both by slackening and by tightening the strings.

Never may a man prone to believe scandal be a despot or a popular leader! Under his guidance, democracy itself will be despotism.

As soldiers need not only courage but tactics also, so does a philosopher need not only courage and philosophy but discernment also, to tell what his right time of dying is - so that he neither seek it nor flee it.

It is the duty of the law-giver to deliver to the many the instructions of whose truth he has persuaded himself.

A man must fortify himself and understand that a wise man who yields to laziness or anger or passion or love of drink, or who commits any other action prompted by impulse and inopportune, will probably find his fault condoned; but if he stoops to greed, he will not be pardoned, but render himself odious as a combination of all vices at once.

I asked certain rich men if they felt embittered. 'How could we not?' they said. So I asked them what caused this anguish. They blamed their wealth.