Adagia: maxims, proverbs and aphorisms

A feed of 20317 short passages of classic wisdom from 304 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

For someone who lands in a way of life not by choice but by accident, as if fate had pushed him there, this line from Homer will serve: "It was the wind that carried him here, and the waves that brought him ashore."

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.

Whoever gives something great finds no gratitude; for the receiver is already too burdened by accepting it.

As the act and possession of delight is never given, so neither is that of utility; for useful is only what leads to happiness, which is placed in nothing but pleasure, by whatever name it is called.

Publilius Syrus

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

There aren't frogs wherever there is water; but where you hear frogs, there is water.

Vauvenargues

We blame the unlucky harshly for the smallest faults, and barely pity them for the greatest misfortunes.

Schopenhauer

The excuse sometimes heard for certain vices, "but it's only natural for people", is no excuse at all. The answer should be: "It is natural precisely because it is bad, and bad precisely because it is natural."

Things have different lights and can be seen from different angles; that's the main source of the variety of opinions. One nation looks at a thing from one side and stops there; another from another.

People teased Monsieur —— about his taste for solitude. He answered: "It's that I'm more used to my own faults than to other people's."

La Rochefoucauld

What we take for virtues is often just a collection of assorted actions and interests, arranged by luck or by our own cunning. Men aren't always brave out of courage, and women aren't always chaste out of chastity.

Marcus Aurelius

You won't often see someone made miserable by not paying attention to what's going on in another person's mind. But people who don't keep track of what's going on in their own minds are bound to be miserable.

— 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.