Maxims

"When a man is old he must do more than when he was young."

"The greatest piece of good fortune is that which corrects our deficiencies and redeems our mistakes."

"Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it has enough of truth. The growing child is wise in this sense."

"When a man asks too much and delights in complication, he is exposed to perplexity."

"There is no piece of foolishness but it can be corrected by intelligence or accident; no piece of wisdom but it can miscarry by lack of intelligence or by accident."

"Every great idea is a tyrant when it first appears; hence the advantages which it produces change all too quickly into disadvantages. It is possible, then, to defend and praise any institution that exists, if its beginnings are brought to remembrance, and it is shown that everything which was true of it at the beginning is true of it still."

"There are two powers that make for peace: what is right, and what is fitting."

"If a man is to achieve all that is asked of him, he must take himself for more than he is, and as long as he does not carry it to an absurd length, we willingly put up with it."

"Work makes companionship."

"Wisdom lies only in truth."

"Generosity wins favour for every one, especially when it is accompanied by modesty."

"Not everywhere where there is water, are there frogs; but where you have frogs, there you will find water."

"Error is quite right as long as we are young, but we must not carry it on with us into our old age."

"Whims and eccentricities that grow stale are all useless, rank nonsense."

"The man who is up and doing should see to it that what he does is right. Whether or not right is done, is a matter which should not trouble him."

"No nation gains the power of judgment except it can pass judgment on itself. But to attain this great privilege takes a very long time."

"Certain minds must be allowed their peculiarities."

"It is said that vain self-praise stinks in the nostrils. That may be so; but for the kind of smell which comes from unjust blame by others the public has no nose at all."

"Dirt glitters as long as the sun shines."

"Real obscurantism is not to hinder the spread of what is true, clear, and useful, but to bring into vogue what is false."

"The finest achievement for a man of thought is to have fathomed what may be fathomed, and quietly to revere the unfathomable."

"Let us remember how great the ancients were; and especially how the Socratic school holds up to us the source and standard of all life and action, and bids us not indulge in empty speculation, but live and do."

"In science it is a service of the highest merit to seek out those fragmentary truths attained by the ancients, and to develop them further."

"The century advances; but every individual begins anew."

"It is very seldom that we satisfy ourselves; all the more consoling is it to have satisfied others."