Adagia: maxims, proverbs and aphorisms

A feed of 19085 short passages of classic wisdom from 330 authors, from Homer, Aesop and the Seven Sages to Marcus Aurelius, Erasmus, Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld and Leopardi, each with its source and, where there is one, the original Greek, Latin or French.

Driven by fate

Against one who not of his own will but by chance and as if with the fates driving falls into some way of life, that from the same book will fit: "But the wind carrying him and the wave drove him here."

Wool takes some colors at once, but others only after repeated soaking and boiling. So too the teaching that changes a life must sink deep and remain there. It must dye the mind through, not merely color its surface.

La Bruyère

Boredom came into the world through laziness; laziness has a large part in men's pursuit of pleasures, gambling and company. A man who loves work has enough in himself.

A lack of confidences between friends is a fault that cannot be reproached without becoming incurable.

Publilius Syrus

It is hard to have to take back with sorrow what you gave with joy.

Vauvenargues

We condemn strongly the least of fences of the unfortunate, and show little sympathy for their greatest troubles.

M.—— was reproached for his love of solitude. “You see,” he said, “I am more accustomed to my own failings than to those of other people.”

La Rochefoucauld

Virtues, as we call them, are often a series of acts and interests which chance, or our own diligence, has arranged. Men are not always brave because courageous, nor women chaste because virtuous.

Marcus Aurelius

People are seldom seen to be unhappy for not attending to what goes on in someone else's soul; but those who do not follow the movements of their own soul are bound to be unhappy.

A man had been beaten at Olympia, and someone said to him: "Spartan, your opponent proved the better man." "No," he said, "the better at throwing."

When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is passing her time with me more than I am with her? We entertain each other with our antics. If I have my time to begin or refuse, she has hers too.

— Why do you talk so trivially about life, then? — Because I think that life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.

When you judge, choose what's just, not what suits you.

We live in an age in which it is a kind of publick sport to refuse all respect that cannot be enforced.