A man cannot live for every one; least of all for those with whom he would not care to live.
I should like to be honest with you, without our falling out; but it will not do. You act wrongly, and fall between two stools; you win no adherents and lose your friends. What is to be the end of it?
If a clever man commits a folly, it is not a small one.
I went on troubling myself about general ideas until I learnt to understand the particular achievements of the best men.
The errors of a man are what make him really lovable.
As in Rome there is, apart from the Romans, a population of statues, so apart from this real world there is a world of illusion, almost more potent, in which most men live.
Mankind is like the Red Sea; the staff has scarcely parted the waves asunder before they flow together again. Thoughts come back; beliefs persist; facts pass by never to return.
Of all peoples, the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life the best.
We readily bow to antiquity, but not to posterity. It is only a father that does not grudge talent to his son. The whole art of living consists in giving up existence in order to exist.
All our pursuits and actions are a wearying process. Well is it for him who wearies not.