C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Cato
A honest man is seldom a vagrant.
All have the gift of speech, but few are possessed of wisdom.
An angry man opens his mouth and shuts up his eyes.
Consider in silence whatever any one says: speech both conceals and reveals the inner soul of man.
Flee sloth; for the indolence of the soul is the decay of the body.
Good-breeding is the art of showing men, by external signs, the internal regard we have for them. It arises from good sense, improved by conversing with good company.
He who fears death has already lost the life he covets.
I think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to the gods who knows how to be silent even though he is in the right.
In conversation avoid the extremes of forwardness and reserve.
Never travel by sea when you can go by land.
Old age has deformities enough of its own; do not add to it the deformity of vice.
Regard not dreams, since they are but the images of our hopes and fears.
Some have said that it is not the business of private men to meddle with government—a bold and dishonest saying, which is fit to come from no mouth but that of a tyrant or a slave. To say that private men have nothing to do with government is to say that private men have nothing to do with their own happiness or misery; that people ought not to concern themselves whether they be naked or clothed, fed or starved, deceived or instructed, protected or destroyed.
Some men are more beholden to their bitterest enemies than to friends who appear to be sweetness itself. The former frequently tell the truth, but the latter never.
Speak briefly and to the point.
The best way to keep good acts in memory is to refresh them with new.
The greatest comfort of my old age, and that which gives me the highest satisfaction, is the pleasing remembrance of the many benefits and friendly offices I have done to others.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
This is my firm persuasion, that since the human soul exerts itself with so great activity, since it has such a remembrance of the best, such a concern for the future, since it is enriched with so many arts, sciences, and discoveries, it is impossible but the being which contains all these must be immortal.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
To succeed in the world, it is much more necessary to possess the penetration to discover who is a fool than to discover who is a clever man.