XIII. (2)

If you would live tranquil and contented, endeavor that all who live with you may be good. And you can have them good by instructing the willing and dismissing the unwilling. For sin and bondage will fly with those who leave you, and with those who remain with you will virtue and liberty be left.

It is scandalous, that he who sweetens his drink by the gift of the bees, should by vice embitter reason, the gift of the Gods.

No one who is a lover of money, a lover of pleasure, or a lover of glory, is likewise a lover of mankind; but only he who is a lover of virtue.

As you would not wish to sail in a large and elegant and gilded ship, and sink; so neither is it desirable to inhabit a grand and sumptuous house, and be in a tumult.

When we are invited to an entertainment we take what we find; and if any one should bid the master of the house set fish or tarts before him, he would be thought absurd. Yet in the world we ask the Gods for what they do not give us; and that, though there are so many things which they have given us.

They are pretty fellows indeed, said he, who value themselves on things not in our own power. I am a better man than you, says one; for I have many estates, and you are pining with hunger. I have been consul, says another; I am a ruler, says a third; and I have a fine head of hair, says a fourth. Yet one horse does not say to another, “I am better than you; for I have a great deal of hay and a great deal of oats; and I have a gold bridle and embroidered trappings”; but only, “I am swifter than you.” And every creature is better or worse from its own good or bad qualities. Is man, then, the only creature which has no natural good quality? And must we take account of hair, and clothes, and ancestors?