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| A fool resents good counsel, but a wise man lays it to heart. | 1 |
| By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is the noblest; second, by imitation, which is the easiest; and third, by experience, which is the bitterest. | 2 |
| Eat at your own table as you would eat at the table of the king. | 3 |
| Faithfulness and sincerity are the highest things. | 4 |
| For one word a man is often deemed wise, and for one word he is often deemed foolish. | 5 |
| Gravity is only the bark of wisdom, but it preserves it. | 6 |
| He who knows right principles is not equal to him who loves them. | 7 |
| He who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his own. | 8 |
| How can a man be concealed? How can a man be concealed? | 9 |
| Humility is the solid foundation of all the virtues. | 10 |
| Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon or star. | 11 |
| Reckon no vice so small that you may commit it, and no virtue so small that you may overlook it. | 12 |
| Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness. | 13 |
| Silence is a friend that will never betray. | 14 |
| Sincerity is the way to heaven. To think how to be sincere is the way of man. | 15 |
| Study the past if you would divine the future. | 16 |
| The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to confess your ignorance. | 17 |
| The faults of the superior man are like the eclipses of the sun and moon. He has his faults, and all men see them; he changes, and all men look up to him. | 18 |
| The heart of a wise man should resemble a mirror, which reflects every object without being sullied by any. | 19 |
| The way of the superior man is threefold—virtuous, he is free from anxieties; wise, he is free from perplexities; bold, he is free from fear. | 20 |
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| They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom. | 21 |
| To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness. | 22 |
| We are not to be astonished that the wise walk more slowly in their road to virtue than fools in their passage to vice; since passion drags us alone, while wisdom only points out the way. | 23 |
| We should feel sorrow, but not sink under its oppression. | 24 |
| We should hold the immutable mean that lies between insensibility and anguish; our attempts should be, not to extinguish nature, but to repress it; not to stand unmoved at distress, but endeavour to turn every disaster to our own advantage. | 25 |
| We take greater pains to persuade others that we are happy than in endeavouring to think so ourselves. | 26 |
| When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it: this is knowledge. | 27 |
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