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Let no one think of me that I am humble or weak or passive; let them understand I am of a different kind: dangerous to my enemies, loyal to my friends. To such a life glory belongs.
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Everyone asks if a man is rich, no one if he is good.
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Friendship doubles your joys, and divides your sorrows.
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The brash unbridled tongue, the lawless folly of fools, will end in pain. But the life of wise content is blest with quietness, escapes the storm and keeps its house secure.
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There is nothing more hostile to a city that a tyrant, under whom in the first and chiefest place, there are not laws in common, but one man, keeping the law himself to himself, has the sway, and this is no longer equal.
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Reason can wrestle and overthrow terror.
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Lady, the sun's light to our eyes is dear, And fair the tranquil reaches of the sea, And flowery earth in May, and bounding waters; And so right many fair things I might praise; Yet nothing is so radiant and so fair As for souls childless, with desire sore-smitten, To see the light of babes about the house.
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Those who have not, and live in want, are a menace, Ridden with envy and fooled by demagogues.
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Chance fights ever on the side of the prudent.
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The gifts of bad men bring no good with them.
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A wise man in his house should find a wife gentle and courteous, or no wife at all.
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If there are none [gods], All our toil is without meaning.
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Love must not touch the marrow of the soul. Our affections must be breakable chains that we can cast them off or tighten them.
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Time will explain it all. He is a talker, and needs no questioning before he speaks.
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In case of dissension, never dare to judge till you've heard the other side.
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When good men die their goodness does not perish.
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No one is truly free, they are a slave to wealth, fortune, the law, or other people restraining them from acting according to their will.
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Toil, says the proverb, is the sire of fame.
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Among mortals second thoughts are wisest.
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The fountains of sacred rivers flow upwards (i.e., everything is turned topsy turvy).
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Waste not fresh tears over old griefs.
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Moderation, the noblest gift of Heaven.
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Knowledge is not wisdom: cleverness is not, not without awareness of our death, not without recalling just how brief our flare is. He who overreaches will, in his overreaching, lose what he possesses, betray what he has now. That which is beyond us, which is greater than the human, the unattainably great, is for the mad, or for those who listen to the mad, and then believe them.
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The man who sticks it out against his fate shows spirit, but the spirit of a fool.