You First

Neither in writing nor in reading wilt thou be able to lay down rules for others before thou shalt have first learned to obey rules thyself. Much more so is this in life.

-Marcus Aurelius

Adding to the Burden

He who relies upon state protection must pay for it by limitations of liberty; by every new demand which he makes on the state, he increases its function and the burden of it on himself. Weary of protecting himself, he begs the state to take care of him; the state, however, only orders him to take care of himself in co-operation with others under its supervision, and it takes its toll from him in money, time, and services for giving him this good advice and this wholesome coercion.

-William Graham Sumner

A Fine Gentleman

[H]e is judicial only in tailors and barbers, but his opinion is ever ready and ever idle. If you will know more of his acts, the broker's shop is the witness of his valor, where lies wounded, dead, rent, and out of fashion, many a spruce suit, overthrown by his fantasticness.

-Sir Thomas Overbury

Dogs

Dogs lives are too short. Their only fault really.

-unknown

Petrification

Petrification is of two sorts. There is petrifaction of the understanding; and also the sense of shame. This happens when a man obstinately refuses to acknowledge plain truths, and persists in maintaining what is self-contradictory. Most of us dread mortification of the body, and would spare no pains to escape anything of that kind. But of mortification of the soul we are utterly heedless. With regard, indeed to the soul, if a man is in such a state as to be incapable of following or understanding anything, I grant you we do think him in a bad way. But mortification of the sense of shame and modesty we go so far as to dub strength of mind!

-Epictetus

Promises of the Moon

The promises made by the Moon are broken by the Sun.

-Anonymous

The Old and the Young

They say... that the old man has nothing... to hope for. Yet he is in better case than the young man, since what the latter merely hopes for, the former has already attained; the one wishes to live long, the other has lived long.

-Cicero