Fortune pays you sometimes for the intensity of her favors by the shortness of their duration. She soon tires of carrying any one long on her shoulders.
Fortunate people often have very favorable beginnings and very tragic endings. What matters isn't being applauded when you arrive - for that is common - but being missed when you leave.
A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
Even knowledge has to be in the fashion, and where it is not, it is wise to affect ignorance.
True knowledge lies in knowing how to live.
Don't show off every day, or you'll stop surprising people. There must always be some novelty left over. The person who displays a little more of it each day keeps up expectations, and no one ever discovers the limits of his talent.
Begin with another's to end with your own.
Be content to act, and leave the talking to others.
Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult, and difficult as if they were easy; in the one case that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other that it may not be dismayed.
At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel, at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, at eighty a nothing at all.
Better mad with the rest of the world than wise alone.
Advice is sometimes transmitted more successfully through a joke than grave teaching.
A single lie destroys a whole reputation of integrity.
A man of honour should never forget what he is because he sees what others are.
A beautiful woman should break her mirror early.