For the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.
The man who first brought ruin upon the Roman people was he who pampered them by largesses and amusements.
If you light upon an impertinent talker, that sticks to you like a bur, to the disappointment of your important occasions, deal freely with him, break off the discourse, and pursue your business.
And Archimedes, as he was washing, thought of a manner of computing the proportion of gold in King Hiero's crown by seeing the water flowing over the bathing-stool. He leaped up as one possessed or inspired, crying, "I have found it! Eureka!".
The crowns of kings do not prevent those who wear them from being tormented sometimes by violent headaches.
Friendship is the most pleasant of all things, and nothing more glads the heart of man.
Painting is silent poetry.
Learn to be pleased with everything, with wealth so far as it makes us beneficial to others; with poverty, for not having much to care for; and with obscurity, for being unenvied.
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.
Character is long-standing habit.
The process may seem strange and yet it is very true. I did not so much gain the knowledge of things by the words, as words by the experience I had of things.
Nothing exists in the intellect that has not first gone through the senses.
As in the case of painters, who have undertaken to give us a beautiful and graceful figure, which may have some slight blemishes, we do not wish then to pass over such blemishes altogether, nor yet to mark them too prominently. The one would spoil the beauty, and the other destroy the likeness of the picture.
If Nature be not improved by instruction, it is blind; if instruction be not assisted by Nature, it is maimed; and if exercise fail of the assistance of both, it is imperfect.
Not by lamentations and mournful chants ought we to celebrate the funeral of a good man, but by hymns; for, ion ceasing to be numbered with mortals, he enters upon the heritage of a diviner life. Since he is gone where he feels no pain, let us not indulge in too much grief. The soul is incapable of death. And he, like a bird not long enough in his cage to become attached to it, is free to fly away to a purer air. . . . Since we cherish a trust like this, let our outward actions be in accord with it, and let us keep our hearts pure and our minds calm.
Epaminondas is reported wittily to have said of a good man that died about the time of the battle of Leuctra, "How came he to have so much leisure as to die, when there was so much stirring?
Lycurgus being asked why he, who in other respects appeared to be so zealous for the equal rights of men, did not make his government democratical rather than oligarchical, "Go you," replied the legislator, "and try a democracy in your own house.
Anaximander says that men were first produced in fishes, and when they were grown up and able to help themselves were thrown up, and so lived upon the land.
For to err in opinion, though it be not the part of wise men, is at least human.
Foreign lady once remarked to the wife of a Spartan commander that the women of Sparta were the only women in the world who could rule men. "We are the only women who raise men," the Spartan lady replied.
Where the lion's skin will not reach, you must patch it out with the fox's.
It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears.
I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised.
Talkativeness has another plague attached to it, even curiosity; for praters wish to hear much that they may have much to say.
I confess myself the greatest coward in the world, for I dare not do an ill thing.
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