Suffer women once to arrive at an equality with you, and they will from that moment become your superiors.
Emas, non quod opus est, sed quod necesse est: quod non opus est, asse carum est. [Buy not what you can use, but what you cannot do without. What you do not need is dear at any price.]
~ quoted by Seneca in Epistulae, xciv, 28
Fures privatorum in nervo atque in compedibus aetatem agunt; Fures publici in auro atque in purpura. [Those who steal from private individuals spend their lives in stocks and chains; those who steal from the public treasure go dressed in gold and purple.”
~ in Praeda militibus dividenda
After I’m dead I’d rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.
Consider in silence whatever any one says: speech both conceals and reveals the inner soul of man.
Do not expect good from another’s death.
Don’t promise twice what you can do at once.
He who fears death has already lost the life he covets.
I think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to the gods who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right.
If you are ruled by mind you are a king; if by body, a slave.
In conversation avoid the extremes of forwardness and reserve.
In doing nothing men learn to do evil.
Old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternatives.
Old age has deformities enough of its own; do not add to it the deformity of vice.
Some have said that it is not the business of private men to meddle with government–a bold and dishonest saying, which is fit to come from no mouth but that of a tyrant or a slave. To say that private men have nothing to do with government is to say that private men have nothing to do with their own happiness or misery; that people ought not to concern themselves whether they be naked or clothed, fed or starved, deceived or instructed, protected or destroyed.
Some men are more beholden to their bitterest enemies than to friends who appear to be sweetness itself. The former frequently tell the truth, but the latter never.
Speak briefly and to the point.
Tis sometimes the height of wisdom to feign stupidity.
The greatest comfort of my old age, and that which gives me the highest satisfaction, is the pleasing remembrance of the many benefits and friendly offices I have done to others.
We cannot control the evil tongues of others; but a good life enables us to disregard them.
Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.
