Publilius Syrus Quotes

We can be the best taught people on the face of the earth but the trouble is we don't live as well as we have been taught.

Clean your finger before you point at my spots.

A superior man thinks of what is right. A small man thinks of profit.

Don't forget your own self while preaching to others.

One who aspires to greatness should read and study, pursuing the True Way with such a firm resolve that he is perfectly straightforward and open, rises above the superficialities of conventional behavior, and refuses to be satisfied with the petty or commonplace.

Our moral virtues benefit mainly other people; intellectual virtues, on the other hand, benefit primarily ourselves; therefore the former make us universally popular, the latter unpopular.

My power for good, whatever it may, would be gone if I didn’t try to live up to the doctrines I have tried to preach.

Isn't it a pleasure to study and practice what you have learned? Isn't it also great when friends visit from distant places? If one remains not annoyed when he is not understood by people around him, isn't he a sage?

If one is not oneself a sage or saint, the best thing one can do is to study the words of those who were.

Character is a quality that embodies many important traits, such as integrity, courage, perseverance, confidence and wisdom. Unlike your fingerprints that you are born with and can't change, character is something that you create within yourself and must take responsibility for changing

Men become old, but they never become good.

My good friend, you are a citizen of Athens, a city which is very great and very famous for its wisdom and power - are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame and prestige, when you neither think nor care about wisdom and truth and the improvement of your soul?

The good thing about being a hypocrite is that you get to keep your values.

Never has a man who has bent himself been able to make others straight.

Sinners often speak the truth. And saints have led people astray. Examine what is said, not the one who says it.

All the work you do, is done for your own salvation, is done for your own benefit.

It is my great desire to reform my subjects, and yet I am ashamed to confess that I am unable to reform myself.

With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet, you're too smart to go down any not-so-good street.

Society gains nothing whilst a man, not himself renovated, attempts to renovate things around him; he has become tediously good insome particular but negligent or narrow in the rest; and hypocrisy and vanity are often the disgusting result.

May our adversities make us strong. May our victories make us wise. May our actions make us proud.

Where all are selfish, the sage is no better than the fool, and only rather more dangerous.

Do you wish the world were better? Let me tell you what to do: Set a watch upon your actions, Keep them always straight and true.

Make it a rule and pray to God to help you keep it . . . never, if possible, to lie down at night without being able to say "I have made one human being at least a little wiser, a little happier, or a little better this day."

Doubtless the world is wicked enough; but it will not be improved by the extension of a spirit which self-righteously sees more to reform outside of itself than in itself.