Apollonius of Tyana

“It is at the time of dawn that we must commune with the gods.”

“Don't keep your good manners to the end another time, but begin with them.”

“In my travels, which have been wider than ever man yet accomplished, I have seen many, many wild beasts of Arabia and India; but this beast, that is commonly called a Tyrant, I know not how many heads it has, nor if it be crooked of claw, and armed with horrible fangs.”

“Multicolored stones and paintings, walkways, and theaters are useless in a city unless it also contains wisdom and law. Such things are the subject of wisdom and law, not equivalent to them.”

“As soldiers need not only courage but tactics also, so does a philosopher need not only courage and philosophy but discernment also, to tell what his right time of dying is - so that he neither seek it nor flee it.”

“In my judgment, excellence and wealth are direct opposites, since when the one shrinks, the other grows, and when one grows, the other shrinks.”

“O ye gods, grant unto me to have little and to want nothing.”

“A man must fortify himself and understand that a wise man who yields to laziness or anger or passion or love of drink, or who commits any other action prompted by impulse and inopportune, will probably find his fault condoned; but if he stoops to greed, he will not be pardoned, but render himself odious as a combination of all vices at once.”

“Never may a man prone to believe scandal be a despot or a popular leader! Under his guidance, democracy itself will be despotism.”

“Do not consider that to be wealth which is hoarded away, for how is it better than sand gathered from the nearest heap? Nor that which comes in from men who groan at their taxes: for the gold that is wrung from tears is of base alloy and black.”

“Nero may have understood how to tune his cithern, but he disgraced his imperial office both by slackening and by tightening the strings.”

“Virtue comes by nature, learning, and practice, and thanks to virtue, all of the aforesaid may deserve approval.”

“I feel friendship towards philosophers, but towards sophists, teachers of literature, or any other such kind of godforsaken people, I neither feel friendship now, nor may I ever do so in the future.”

“You need not wonder at my knowing all human languages; for, to tell you the truth, I also understand all the secrets of human silence.”

“The gods, as they are beneficent, if they find anyone who is healthy and whole and unscarred by vice, will send him away, surely, after crowning him, not with golden crowns, but with all sorts of blessings.”

“I asked questions when I was a stripling, and it is not my business to ask questions now, but to teach people what I have discovered.”

“The gods do not need sacrifices, so what might one do to please them? Acquire wisdom, it seems to me, and do all the good in one's power to those humans who deserve it.”

“Plato said that virtue has no master. If a person does not honor this principle and rejoice in it, but is purchasable for money, he creates many masters for himself.”

“Festivals cause diseases, since they lighten cares but increase gluttony.”

“Pythagoras said that medicine is the most godlike of arts. But if the most godlike, it should tend to the soul as well as the body, or else a living thing must be unhealthy, being diseased in its higher part.”