The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
It is the merit of a general to impart good news, and to conceal the truth.
Not knowing anything is the sweetest life.
To him who is in fear everything rustles.
A lie never lives to be old.
Fortune raises up and fortune brings low both the man who fares well and the one who fares badly; and there is no prophet of the future for mortal men.
There is an ancient saying among men that you cannot thoroughly understand the life of mortals before the man has died, then only can you call it good or bad.
Whoever grows angry amid troubles applies a drug worse than the disease and is a physician unskilled about misfortunes.
I see the state of all of us who live, nothing more than phantoms or a weightless shadow.
The gods plant reason in mankind, of all good gifts the highest.
Things gained through unjust fraud are never secure.
Whoever thinks that he alone has speech, or possesses speech or mind above others, when unfolded such men are seen to be empty.
Despair often breeds disease.
The dice of Zeus always fall luckily.
There is nothing more hateful than bad advice.
Ignorant men don't know what good they hold in their hands until they've flung it away.
Time alone reveals the just man; but you might discern a bad man in a single day.
It is a base thing for a man among the people not to obey those in command. Never in a state can the laws be well administered when fear does not stand firm.
Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.
There is no greater evil than anarchy.
Not even old age knows how to love death.
Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud.
There is no greater evil for men than the constraint of fortune.
For the wretched one night is like a thousand; for someone faring well death is just one more night.
Reverence does not die with mortals, nor does it perish whether they live or die.
A wise man does not chatter with one whose mind is sick.
Old age and the passage of time teach all things.
All is disgust when a man leaves his own nature and does what is unfit.
Hide nothing, for time, which sees all and hears all, exposes all.
A human being is only breath and shadow.
Evil gains work their punishment.
Alas, how quickly the gratitude owed to the dead flows off, how quick to be proved a deceiver.
If one begins all deeds well, it is likely that they will end well too.
For those whose wit becomes the mother of villainy, those it educates to be evil in all things.
It's impossible to speak what it is not noble to do.
If it were possible to cure evils by lamentation and to raise the dead with tears, then gold would be a less valuable thing than weeping.