16. Laws are useless when people are pure, broken when people are impure.
17. Where law ends, tyranny begins.
18. The noise of weapons drowns the voice of law.
19. Arms and laws do not dwell together.
20. A lean compromise is better than a fat lawsuit.
21. The more laws, the more offenders.
22. The prince is not above the laws.
23. Fear not the law, but the judge.
Chapter 94: Leisure
1. A life of laziness and a life of leisure are not the same thing.
2. To have leisure requires good use of time; the idle have least leisure, the self-disciplined most.
3. Those who use time well are least at leisure when at leisure; for they use leisure to improve their mind’s estate, and to nourish friendship.
4. Leisure is the reward of labour, the mother of philosophy, a bringer of gifts.
5. Leisure is the repair of life, knitting up the ends frayed by labour and striving.
6. Leisure is the womb of innovations, the brother of art, the companion of love.
7. Leisure is the stream that replenishes the reservoir, with waters clean and cool.
Chapter 95: Lending
1. Will you make an enemy? Let him borrow from you.
2. It is better to give a dollar than lend a cent.
3. Lend to a foe and make a friend; lend to a friend and make a foe.
4. What we spent we have; what we gave came back doubled; what we lent we lost.
5. Loans do not come laughing home, but stay abroad as enemies.
6. If you would lend, lend only what you can lose.
7. If you have enough to lend, you have enough to give; and gain more by it.
Chapter 96: Liars
1. Liars begin by deceiving others, and end by deceiving themselves.
2. Old folk and great travellers lie by licence; lawyers lie for pay.
3. Why say ‘Show me a liar and I’ll show you a thief’? Because liars steal trust.
4. When the liar speaks true, is he believed? Does the liar believe even the honest man?
5. The liar more readily takes an oath.
6. The liar is sooner caught than one who cannot run.
7. The liar is less happy than the sufferer for truth.
8. The liar has no real friend.
9. Liars have least respect for other people.
10. Liars have least respect from other people.
Chapter 97: Liberty
1. Lean liberty is better than fat slavery.
2. Liberty is not licence.
3. The price of liberty is unsleeping vigilance.
4. Better a crust in liberty than sweetmeats in prison.
5. Liberty is the breath of progress.
6. Liberty is the free man’s country.
Chapter 98: Lies
1. Half the truth is often a great lie.
2. Who hears much, hears many lies.
3. The cruellest lies are often told in silence.
4. Lies grow with repetition.
5. There is no lie so reckless as lacks some proof.
6. You can travel far with a lie, but you cannot come back.
Chapter 99: Life
1. Life is short and full of blisters.
2. A long life might not be good enough, but a good life is long enough.
3. To live well is to live long.
4. Life is all in this present hour.
5. Life is short and time is swift.
6. They do not live more who live longer.
7. Life is a school of probability.
8. Life is a lesson in humility.
9. Life is a loom, weaving illusions.
10. Life is a winter’s day and a winter’s way.
11. The secret of life is not to do what you like, but to like what you do.
12. Many do not live, but linger.
13. Do not look for a golden life in an iron age.
14. While I live, let it not be in vain.
15. Not life itself, but living ill, is evil.
16. They live badly who are always about to begin living.
17. We live not as we wish but as we can.
18. As long as one lives, one must continue learning how to live.
Chapter 100: Love
1. Love makes any place agreeable.
2. We have a choice to begin love, but not to end it.
3. Love knows no laws or conditions.
4. Dry bread is better with love than a fat capon with fear.
5. They who have love in their hearts have spurs in their sides.
6. Hope is a lover’s staff.
7. The lover is no judge of beauty.
8. In love there is no lack.
9. Labour is light where love pays.
10. Love and ambition do not keep fellowship.
11. Love and pride are both roads to lunacy.
12. Love and sorrow were born twins.
13. Love built on beauty fades as soon as it ages.
14. Hasty love is soon hot and soon cold.
15. Love is more than great riches.
16. Love is master where he will.
17. Love is the noblest frailty of the mind.
18. Calf love, half love; old love, cold love.
19. Love is the salt of life.
20. Love is too young to know what conscience is.
21. Love has neither reason nor law.
22. Love keeps out the cold better than a cloak.
23. Love knows no measure.
24. There is beggary in the love that can be counted.
25. Love laughs at locksmiths.
26. The lover is a monarch.
27. Love needs no instruction.
28. Pity is one remove from love.
29. She loves enough who does not hate.
30. Come blows, love goes.
31. Love is a hearth for forbidden fires.
32. Love is a talkative passion.
33. Love is an egoism of two.
34. Love is stronger than death.
35. Love makes time pass; time makes love pass.
36. Love never dies of starvation, but often of indigestion.
37. The beloved is always right.
38. Love lessens women’s delicacy, and increases men’s.
39. Love’s anger is fuel to love.
40. Lovers take pleasure from their misfortunes.
41. Love excuses its own faults.
42. Love is blind, but sees far.
43. Love abounds in honey and poison.
44. Love is the same in everyone.
45. Love is credulous.
46. What love commands, it is not safe to despise.
47. The lover loves much who weeps.
48. Love is the child of illusion, and the parent of disillusion.
49. Affection bends the judgement to her ply.
50. When affection speaks, truth is not always by.
Chapter 101: Mankind
1. Good people and bad people are both less so than they seem.
2. Humans are animals that make bargains.
3. Man is a gaming animal.
4. Man is a substance clad in shadows.
5. People are beasts when shame deserts them.
6. Man is to man the surest ill.
7. Human beings are mankind’s greatest enemy.
8. Customs vary, but human nature is always the same.
9. Nature revolves, but humanity advances.
10. No one is born learned and wise.
11. A human being is a mere reed, but a thinking reed.
12. For mankind, nothing is certain but death.
13. Nothing is more glorious or more wretched than humanity.
14. People too often talk wisely but live foolishly.
Chapter 102: Manners
1. Good breeding is the fruit of good sense.
2. As in the hall, so on the hill.
3. The sum of good manners is,
‘After you.’
4. Good manners consist in small sacrifices.
5. Manners make the man.
6. Manners are morals.
7. As the times, so the manners.
8. Evil communications corrupt good manners.
9. Office corrupts manners.
Chapter 103: Mind
1. A vacant mind is open to all suggestions, as a mountain cave to echoes.
2. Fat bodies, lean minds.
3. If the brain sows no corn, it grows thistles.
4. Whatever afflicts people, their minds are free.
5. In the end, mind vanquishes sword.
6. It is good to polish the mind against other minds.
7. It is the mind that ennobles, not the blood.
8. A noble mind is free to all.
9. Light minds love trifles.
10. The wise master their minds, fools are mastered by them.
11. Pain of mind is worse than pain of body.
12. The mind alone cannot suffer exile.
13. The mind is the man.
14. To relax the mind is to lose it.
15. The mind rules, the body serves.
Chapter 104: Misers
1. A miser’s money takes the place of wisdom.
2. Misers put their backs and bellies into their pockets.
3. The miser gives straw to his dog and bones to his ass.
4. A miser spoils the coat by scanting the cloth.
5. Niggard father, spendthrift son.
6. The miser is always poor.
7. What misers have is of as much use to them as what they have not.
Chapter 105: Moderation
1. Measure is medicine.
2. The best things carried to excess are wrong.
3. In everything there is a measure.
4. Enough is enough for the wise.
Chapter 106: Money
1. One handful of money is stronger than two handfuls of truth.
2. A person without money is a bow without an arrow.
3. Help me to money and I will help myself to friends.
4. Everyone bastes the fat hog while the lean one burns.
5. For lack of money one cannot speed.
6. If money goes before, all ways lie open.
7. Money begets money.
8. Money is ace of trumps.
9. Money is often lost for want of money.
10. When fishing for man, money is the best bait.
11. Money is welcome though it come in dirty clothes.
12. Money makes us laugh.
13. Money makes mastery.
14. Money makes the pot boil.
15. Money makes, and money mars.
16. Ready money is a ready remedy.
17. The love of money and the love of learning seldom meet.
18. Liberty is the price paid for money.
19. Money is perfumed, wherever found.
20. There is no companion like money.
21. To have money is a fear, to lack it is a grief.
22. They need honey on their tongues who have no money in their purses.
23. Money has wings.
24. Money is never out of season.
25. Mention money, and the world is silent.
26. The person with both mind and money employs the latter well.
27. Money is the sinew of affairs.
28. The love of money grows with the amount of money.
29. You must spend money if you wish to make it.
30. When money speaks, truth is silent.
Chapter 107: Mothers
1. Better the child cry than the mother sigh.
2. A child may have too much of a mother’s blessing.
3. Light-heeled mothers make leaden-heeled daughters.
4. Men are what their mothers make them.
5. Mothers’ darlings make milksop heroes.
6. The kick of the dam does not hurt the colt.
7. Mother love is always in its spring.
8. Who takes the child by the hand takes the mother by the heart.
9. Children are the anchors that hold their mothers to life.
10. A bustling mother makes a slothful child.
11. The mother’s breath is always sweet.
12. No mother has a homely child.
13. A mother’s wrath does not survive the night.
14. A mother will understand what her dumb child says.
15. When the child falls the mother weeps; when the mother falls the child laughs.
16. More than one mother can make a tasty soup.
17. Judge someone not by the words of his mother but by the comments of his neighbours.
Chapter 108: Nature
1. To know nature, consult nature.
2. It cannot be nature, if it is not sense.
3. Nature is the true law.
4. Nature obeys necessity.
5. Nature pardons no mistakes.
6. To command nature one must obey it.
7. The volume of nature is the book of knowledge.
8. Wisdom and nature never say different things.
9. Nature always returns.
10. Nature does nothing in vain.
Chapter 109: Necessity
1. Necessity breaks iron.
2. Necessity is the argument of tyrants and the creed of slaves.
3. Necessity makes an honest man a knave.
4. Necessity never makes a good bargain.
5. We do what we must, and call it by good names.
6. Necessity is a strict teacher.
7. Every act of necessity is disagreeable.
8. The wise never oppose necessity.
9. Necessity knows no shame.
Chapter 110: Opinion
1. Only little minds are alienated by differences of opinion.
2. Erroneous opinions can be tolerated where reason is free to combat them.
3. Opinion in good people is knowledge in the making.
4. So many heads, so many opinions.
5. A man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, which breeds reptiles.
6. Opinion is the queen of the world.
7. Those who never retract an opinion love themselves more than truth.
Chapter 111: Opportunity
1. Every opportunity grasped is two new opportunities made.
2. Hoist sail in a fair wind.
3. Opportunity seldom comes labelled.
4. Who seizes the right moment is the right person for the moment.
5. Know your opportunity.
Chapter 112: Pain
1. Where we feel pain we lay a hand.
2. An hour of pain is as long as a day of pleasure.
3. Great pain for little gain makes a man weary.
4. If pains be a pleasure, profit will follow.
5. Pain is forgotten when gain comes.
6. Those who do not feel pain seldom think others feel it.
7. There is a pleasure akin to pain.
8. No matter which finger you bite, it will hurt.
9. Nothing comes without pains except dirt and long nails.
Chapter 113: Patience
1. Grain by grain the hen fills her belly.
2. They who can have patience can have what they will.
3. How poor are those without patience.
4. Patience achieves more than force.
5. Patience is a plaster for all sores.
6. Patience opens every door.
7. Every misfortune is subdued by patience.
8. Patience provoked often turns to fury.
9. Be patient, and shuffle the cards.
10. With patience and time the mulberry becomes a silk gown.
Chapter 114: Peace
1. Peace breeds, strife consumes.
2. Better a lean peace than a fat victory.
3. By wisdom peace, by wisdom plenty.
4. Peace begins where ambition ends.
5. Peace has greater victories than w
ar.
6. When people find no peace within, they will find it nowhere else.
Chapter 115: People
1. The mob has many heads but no brains.
2. The people pay with ingratitude.
3. The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.
4. To worship the people is to be worshipped.
5. Trust not the many-minded populace.
6. Nothing is so uncertain as the judgements of the mob.
7. It is easy to side with the crowd.
Chapter 116: Philanthropy
1. Mankind will not be reasoned out of the feeling of humanity.
2. We praise those who love their fellow human beings.
3. What good thing you do, do not defer it.
4. What is done for another is done for oneself.
5. Only those live who do good.
Chapter 117: Philosophy
1. Philosophy is the sweet milk of adversity.
2. Clarity is the sincerity of philosophers.
3. Philosophy is doubt.
4. Let philosophers be wise for themselves.
5. Philosophy does the going, and wisdom is the goal.
6. Philosophy is the mother of the arts.
7. The true medicine of the mind is philosophy.
8. To enjoy freedom, be the slave of philosophy.
Chapter 118: Pleasure
1. If you long for pleasure you must labour to get it.
2. After pleasant scratching comes painful smarting.
3. Fly the pleasure that bites tomorrow.
4. Follow pleasure and it will flee, flee pleasure and it will follow.
5. For one pleasure a thousand griefs are proved.
6. Pleasure makes hours short.
7. Pleasure is the greatest incentive to vice.
8. Rarity gives zest to pleasure.
9. There is no pleasure unalloyed.
Chapter 119: Politics
1. All politicians die by swallowing their own lies.
2. The honest politician is the one who, when bought, stays bought.
3. Few politicians die, and none resign.
4. Politicians neither love nor hate.
5. Old politicians chew on past wisdom.
6. Party is the madness of the many for the gain of the few.
7. There is no gambling like politics.
8. Vain hope, to make people happy by politics.
9. When great questions end, little parties begin.
10. Office shows the person.
Chapter 120: Poverty
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