"Some remedies are worse than the disease." -- Publilius Syrus
Publilius (less correctly Publius) Syrus, a Latin writer of maxim, flourished in the 1st century BC. He was a Syrian who was brought as a slave to Italy, but by his wit and talent he won the favor of his master, who freed and educated him.
His mimes, in which he acted himself, had a great success in the provincial towns of Italy and at the games given by Caesar in 46 BC. Publilius was perhaps even more famous as an improviser, and received from Caesar himself the prize in a contest in which he vanquished all his competitors, including the celebrated Decimus Laberius.
All that remains of his works is a collection of Sentences (Sententiae), a series of moral maxims in iambic and trochaic verse. This collection must have been made at a very early date, since it was known to Aulus Gellius in the 2nd century AD. Each maxim consists of a single verse, and the verses are arranged in alphabetical order according to their initial letters. In the course of time the collection was interpolated with sentences drawn from other writers, especially from apocryphal writings of Seneca; the number of genuine verses is about 700. They include many pithy sayings, such as the famous "judex damnatur ubi nocens absolvitur" ("The judge is condemned when the guilty is acquitted") adopted as its motto by the Edinburgh Review.
As of 1911, the best texts of the Sentences were those of Eduard Wölfflin (1869), A. Spengel (1874), and Wilhelm Meyer (1880), with complete critical apparatus and index verborum; editions with notes by O. Friedrich (1880), R. A. H. Bickford-Smith (1895), with full bibliography; see also W. Meyer, Die Sammlungen der Spruchverse des Publilius Syrus (1877), an important work.
"A beautiful face is a mute recommendation.""A gift in season is a double favor to the needy.""A good reputation is more valuable than money.""A hasty judgment is a first step to recantation.""Admonish your friends privately, but praise them openly.""An angry father is most cruel towards himself.""An angry man is again angry with himself when he returns to reason.""Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.""Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.""Audacity augments courage; hesitation, fear.""Count not him among your friends who will retail your privacies to the world.""Do not despise the bottom rungs in the ascent to greatness.""Each day is the scholar of yesterday.""Familiarity breeds contempt.""Fortune is like glass - the brighter the glitter, the more easily broken.""From the errors of others, a wise man corrects his own.""God looks at the clean hands, not the full ones.""Good health and good sense are two of life's greatest blessings.""He who has lost honor can lose nothing more.""He who lives in solitude may make his own laws.""He who spares the bad injures the good.""He whom many fear, has himself many to fear.""How unhappy is he who cannot forgive himself.""I often regret that I have spoken; never that I have been silent.""If you wish to reach the highest, begin at the lowest.""It is a bad plan that admits of no modification.""It is a fraud to borrow what we are unable to pay.""It is a good thing to learn caution from the misfortunes of others.""It is better to learn late than never.""It is folly to punish your neighbor by fire when you live next door.""It is kindness to immediately refuse what you intend to deny.""It is not every question that deserves an answer.""It is only the ignorant who despise education.""Learn to see in another's calamity the ills which you should avoid.""Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.""Never promise more than you can perform.""No one knows what he can do until he tries.""One is not exposed to danger who, even when in safety is always on their guard.""Pain forces even the innocent to lie.""Powerful indeed is the empire of habit.""Practice is the best of all instructors.""Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them.""Reprove your friends in secret, praise them openly.""Speech is the mirror of the soul.""Take care that no one hates you justly.""The bare recollection of anger kindles anger.""The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing.""The happy man is not he who seems thus to others, but who seems thus to himself.""The judge is found guilty when a criminal is acquitted.""The miser is as much in want of what he has as of what he has not.""The opportunity is often lost by deliberating.""The person who receives the most favors is the one who knows how to return them.""The remedy for wrongs is to forget them.""The timid man calls himself cautious, the sordid man thrifty.""The weeping of an heir is laughter in disguise.""The wounds of love can only be healed by the one who made them.""There are some remedies worse than the disease.""They do injury to the good who spares the bad.""To do two things at once is to do neither.""To refuse graciously is to confer a favor.""Treat your friend as if he might become an enemy.""Valor grows by daring, fear by holding back.""We are born princes and the civilizing process makes us frogs.""We die as often as we lose a friend.""What is left when honor is lost?""When you confer a benefit on those worthy of it, you confer a favor on all.""Where there is unity there is always victory.""While we stop to think, we often miss our opportunity.""You are in a pitiable condition if you have to conceal what you wish to tell.""You can accomplish by kindness what you cannot by force.""You cannot put the same shoe on every foot."