What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly.

As bees extract honey from thyme, the strongest and driest of herbs, so sensible men often get advantage and profit from the most awkward circumstances.

For the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.

Instead of using medicine, better fast today.

The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.

Riches for the most part are hurtful to them that possess them.

The present offers itself to our touch for only an instant of time and then eludes the senses.

For it was not so much that by means of words I came to a complete understanding of things, as that from things I somehow had an experience which enabled me to follow the meaning of words.

There is never the body of a man, how strong and stout soever, if it be troubled and inflamed, but will take more harm and offense by wine being poured into it.

If you light upon an impertinent talker, that sticks to you like a bur, to the disappointment of your important occasions, deal freely with him, break off the discourse, and pursue your business.

To the Dolphin alone, beyond all other, nature has granted what the best philosophers seek: friendship for no advantage.

Another Spartan, when he saw men sitting on stools in a lavatory, declared: May I never sit where it is impossible for me to get up and offer my seat to an older man.

Foreign lady once remarked to the wife of a Spartan commander that the women of Sparta were the only women in the world who could rule men. We are the only women who raise men, the Spartan lady replied.

The Spartans do not ask how many are the enemy but where are they.

The giving of riches and honors to a wicked man is like giving strong wine to him that hath a fever.

It is the usual consolation of the envious, if they cannot maintain their superiority, to represent those by whom they are surpassed as inferior to some one else.

When malice is joined to envy, there is given forth poisonous and feculent matter, as ink from the cuttle-fish.

Philosophy is the art of living.

The pilot cannot mitigate the billows or calm the winds.