The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.

To sum up the whole, we should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god.

It is possible to be below flattery as well as above it. One who trusts nobody will not trust sycophants. One who does not value real glory will not value its counterfeit.

Finesse is the best adaptation of means to circumstances.

People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws.

I would rather be poor in a cottage full of books than a king without the desire to read.

The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

Ye diners out from whom we guard our spoons.

Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.

Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.

I have seen the hippopotamus, both asleep and awake; and I can assure you that, awake or asleep, he is the ugliest of the works of God.

There's nothing wrong with stretching the truth. We stretch taffy, and that just makes it more delicious.

It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him.

Analyse it

[Magnus] held on to the boy, newborn in grave dirt and blood, and he wished that he had found him dead.

I think the canary left some feathers in there after you ate it.

The logic is backwards. Genius is the result of doing what you love, not a prerequisite for it.

If I had even a slight awareness, and practiced the Great Way, what I would fear would be deviating from it.

It's a cowardly form of politics to use my spouse to beat me.

The author knows just what he wants to illustrate and how he would like it to be done.

Is there anyone to whom you entrust a greater number of serious matters than your wife? And is there anyone with whom you have fewer conversations?