"The wise man will want to be ever with him who is better than himself."

"Observe that open loves are held to be more honorable than secret ones, and that the love of the noblest and highest, even if their persons are less beautiful than others, is especially honorable."

"If the truth of all things that are is always in our soul, then the soul must be immortal, so you should take courage and whatever you do not happen to know, that is to remember, at present, you must endeavor to discover and recollect I cannot swear to everything I have said in this argument but one thing I am ready to fight for in word and deed, that we shall be better, braver and more active men if we believe it right to look for what we do not know, than if we think we cannot discover it and have no duty to seek it."

"The rhetorician need not know the truth about things; he has only to discover some way of persuading the ignorant that he has more knowledge than those who know."

"No one is a friend to his friend who does not love in return."

"Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike."

"Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments."

"The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity."

"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."

"No human thing is of serious importance."

"Appearance tyrannizes over truth."

"The makers of fortunes have a second love of money as a creation of their own, resembling the affection of authors for their own poems, or of parents for their children, besides that natural love of it for the sake of use and profit which is common to them and all men. And hence they are very bad company, for they can talk about nothing but the praises of wealth."

"He who is not a good servant will not be a good master."

"Every king springs from a race of slaves, and every slave had kings among his ancestors."

"The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation."

"The greatest penalty of evildoing; namely, to grow into the likeness of bad men."

"Of necessity, the most like are most full of envy, strife, and hatred of one another, and the most unlike of friendship. For the poor man is compelled to be the friend of the rich, and the weak requires the aid of the strong, and the sick man of the physician; everyone who knows not has to love and court him who knows."

"Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another."

"The thing to be done does not choose, I imagine, to tarry the leisure of the doer, but the doer must be at the beck of the thing to be done, and not treat it as a secondary affair."

"True friendship can exist only between equals."