'Tis a grievous thing to be subject to an inferior.

He who does wrong is more unhappy than he who suffers wrong.

Repentance for one's evil deeds is the safeguard of life.

Not from fear but from a sense of duty refrain from your sins.

'Tis not in strength of body nor in gold that men find happiness, but in uprightness and in fulness of understanding.

'Tis well to restrain the wicked, and in any case not to join him in his wrong-doing.

If one choose the goods of the soul, he chooses the diviner [portion]; if the goods of the body, the merely mortal.

If any one hearken with understanding to these sayings of mine many a deed worthy of a good man shall he perform and many a foolish deed be spared.

He who intends to enjoy life should not be busy about many things, and in what he does should not undertake what exceeds his natural capacity. On the contrary, he should have himself so in hand that even when fortune comes his way, and is apparently ready to lead him on to higher things, he should put her aside and not o'erreach his powers. For a being of moderate size is safer than one that bulks too big.

Of practical wisdom these are the three fruits: to deliberate well, to speak to the point, to do what is right.

There are two forms of knowledge, one genuine, one obscure. To the obscure belong all of the following: sight, hearing, smell, taste, feeling. The other form is the genuine, and is quite distinct from this. [And then distinguishing the genuine from the obscure, he continues:] Whenever the obscure [way of knowing] has reached the minimum sensibile of hearing, smell, taste, and touch, and when the investigation must be carried farther into that which is still finer, then arises the genuine way of knowing, which has a finer organ of thought.

In fact we do not know anything infallibly, but only that which changes according to the condition of our body and of the [influences] that reach and impinge upon it.

Verily we know nothing. Truth is buried deep.

Now, that we do not really know of what sort each thing is, or is not, has often been shown.

Now his principal doctrines were these. That atoms and the vacuum were the beginning of the universe; and that everything else existed only in opinion. (trans. Yonge 1853) The first principles of the universe are atoms and empty space; everything else is merely thought to exist.