Evil always steals from honor, and the innocent suffers, and he who sacrifices himself for others receives only enmity and malice in response.
How can the pure at heart be pretended?
He who lives godly is the enemy of the dishonest.
Love is harder to defeat than a mob of enemies.
The people obey and respect their king, usually, until misfortune befalls the king; then he revolts and shakes his chains.
He who is not loved, can he be unfaithful?
Hatred for the father will be poured out on the son.
Not infrequently, the gods' gift is poisoned.
In vain you will oppose the passions, or the storm.
Jealousy disobeys reason.
It is not in our power to oppose the command of the gods. It is the duty of mortals to accept the judgment of almighty destiny.
You sow evil, you reap a bloody harvest.
Those whose pain is silent suffer more.
From fear, man is capable of anything.
Passion, no matter how much you hide it, is visible from the outside. Everything betrays us: the sigh, the movement, the speech, the look. The hidden fire is a hundred times stronger.
The tyrant is sweet as long as he is powerless.
The man with mediocre qualities also has mediocre virtue.
... Whose heart is not gripped by the pain of wanting to please him who rules it?
I embrace my rival not only with the aim of strangling him.
Our faults are seen most clearly by the very people who make us overlook them.
In society, we are often successful thanks to our flaws, not our qualities.
Man has more defects of character than of thought.
The surest way to be deceived is to think yourself more cunning than others.
To praise kings for qualities they do not possess is to insult them with impunity.
All the virtues gather in one interest like rivers in the sea.
Everyone complains about memory, but no one complains about reason.
What ceases to bring success ceases to be liked.
Even the most rational men are thoughtful only in trifles; in important matters reason usually deceives them.
If we are to judge love by its usual manifestations, it is more like enmity than friendship.
There are people who are destined to be stupid: they do stupid things not only by their own will, but also by the will of fate.