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Medicine to produce health must examine disease; and music, to create harmony must investigate discord.
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Water and our necessary food are the only things that wise men must fight for.
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Custom is almost a second nature.
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Empire may be gained by gold, not gold by empire. It used, indeed, to be a proverb that 'It is not Philip, but Philip's gold that takes the cities of Greece.'
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Rome was in the most dangerous inclination to change on account of the unequal distribution of wealth and property, those of highest rank and greatest spirit having impoverished themselves by shows, entertainments, ambition of offices, and sumptuous buildings, and the riches of the city having thus fallen into the hands of mean and low-born persons. So that there wanted but a slight impetus to set all in motion, it being in the power of every daring man to overturn a sickly commonwealth.
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I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.
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What meal is not expensive? That for which no animal is put to death. … one participating of feeling, of seeing, of hearing, of imagination, and of intellection; which each animal hath received from Nature for the acquiring of what is agreeable to it, and the avoiding what is disagreeable.
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He is a fool who lets slip a bird in the hand for a bird in the bush.
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We ought to regard books as we do sweetmeats, not wholly to aim at the pleasantest, but chiefly to respect the wholesomest; not forbidding either, but approving the latter most.
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For many, as Cranton tells us, and those very wise men, not now but long ago, have deplored the condition of human nature, esteeming life a punishment, and to be born a man the highest pitch of calamity; this, Aristotle tells us, Silenus declared when he was brought captive to Midas.
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Character is simply habit long continued.
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Among real friends there is no rivalry or jealousy of one another, but they are satisfied and contented alike whether they are equal or one of them is superior.
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Of all the disorders in the soul, envy is the only one no one confesses to.
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Wickedness frames the engines of her own torment. She is a wonderful artisan of a miserable life.
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Nothing is cheap which is superfluous, for what one does not need, is dear at a penny.
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Ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting solidity or exactness of beauty.
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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.
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He said they that were serious in ridiculous matters would be ridiculous in serious affairs.
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The omission of good is no less reprehensible than the commission of evil.
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Whenever anything is spoken against you that is not true, do not pass by or despise it because it is false; but forthwith examine yourself, and consider what you have said or done that may administer a just occasion of reproof.
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The saying of old Antigonus, who when he was to fight at Andros, and one told him, 'The enemy's ships are more than ours,' replied, 'For how many then wilt thou reckon me?'
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Socrates said, 'Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.'
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Lycurgus the Lacedæmonian brought long hair into fashion among his countrymen, saying that it rendered those that were handsome more beautiful, and those that were deformed more terrible. To one that advised him to set up a democracy in Sparta, "Pray," said Lycurgus, "do you first set up a democracy in your own house."
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Prosperity has this property, it puffs up narrow Souls, makes them imagine themselves high and mighty, and look down upon the World with Contempt; but a truly noble and resolved Spirit appears greatest in Distress, and then becomes more bright and conspicuous.