"You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters."

"If you are wise, all men will be your friends and kindred, for you will be useful."

"The plan grows under the author's hand; new thoughts occur to him in the act of writing; he has not worked out the argument to the end before he begins."

"The helpful is beautiful; only the harmful is ugly."

"Let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly."

"Certainly old age has a great sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we are freed from the grasp not of one mad master only, but of many. The truth is, Socrates, that these regrets, and also the complaints about relations, are to be attributed to the same cause, which is not old age, but men's characters and tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden."

"Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another."

"I used to imagine that no human can make men good; but I know better now."

"No human thing is of serious importance."

"Think only of the ambition of men, and you will wonder at the senselessness of their ways, unless you consider how they are stirred by the love of an immortality of fame. They are ready to run all risks greater far than they would have run for their children, and to spend money and undergo any sort of toil, and even to die, for the sake of leaving behind them a name which shall be eternal."