There is nothing which wings its flight so swiftly as calumny, nothing is uttered with more ease; nothing is listened to with more readiness, nothing disbursed more widely.
The rule of friendship means there should be mutual sympathy between them, each supplying what the other lacks and trying to benefit the other, always using friendly and sincere words.
What the object of senile avarice may be I cannot conceive. For can there be anything more absurd than to seek more journey money, the less there remains of the journey?
There is a difference between justice and consideration in one's relations to one's fellow men. It is the function of justice not to do wrong to one's fellow men of considerateness, not to wound their feelings.
Nothing is so unpredictable as a throw of the dice, and yet every man who plays often will at some time or other make a Venus-cast: now and then he indeed will make it twice and even thrice in succession. Are we going to be so feebleminded then as to aver that such a thing happened by the personal intervention of Venus rather than by pure luck?
That man is guilty of impertinence who considers not the circumstances of time, or engrosses the conversation, or makes himself the subject of his discourse, or pays no regard to the company he is in.
It is a strong proof of men knowing most things before birth, that when mere children they grasp innumerable facts with such speed as to show that they are not then taking them in for the first time, but are remembering and recalling them.
These (literary) studies are the food of youth, and consolation of age; they adorn prosperity, and are the comfort and refuge of adversity; they are pleasant at home, and are no incumbrance abroad; they accompany us at night, in our travels, and in our rural retreats.