Solon

Wealth I would have, but wealth by wrong procure

I would not; justice, e'en if slow, is sure.

• Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans (Plutarch)
  • p. 169 ("Plutarch's Lives and Writings", Easton Press, 2021, vol. 1)

Some wicked men are rich, some good are poor,

We will not change our virtue for their store;

Virtue's a thing that none can take away,

But money changes owners all the day.

• Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans (Plutarch)
  • p. 170 ("Plutarch's Lives and Writings", Easton Press, 2021, vol. 1)

men keep their promises when neither side can get anything by the breaking of them

• Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans (Plutarch)
  • p. 172 ("Plutarch's Lives and Writings", Easton Press, 2021, vol. 1)

[Our wisdom], observing the numerous misfortunes that attend all conditions, forbids us to grow insolent upon our present enjoyments, or to admire any man's happiness that may yet, in course of time, suffer change. For the uncertain future has yet to come, with every possible variety of fortune; and him only to whom the divinity has continued happiness unto the end, we call happy; to salute as happy one that is still in the midst of life and hazard, we think as little safe and conclusive as to crown and proclaim as victorious the wrestler that is yet in the ring.

• Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans (Plutarch)
  • p. 196 ("Plutarch's Lives and Writings", Easton Press, 2021, vol. 1)

A people always minds its rulers best

When it is neither humored nor oppressed.

• Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans (Plutarch)
  • p. 228 ("Plutarch's Lives and Writings", Easton Press, 2021, vol. 1)

He allowed not all sorts of legacies, but only those which were not extorted by the frenzy of a disease, charms, imprisonment, force, or the persuasions of a wife; with good reason thinking that being seduced into wrong was as bad as being forced, and that between deceit and necessity, flattery and compulsion, there was little difference, since both may equally suspend the exercise of reason.

• Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans
  • p. 189 ("Plutarch's Lives and Writings", Easton Press, 2021, vol. 1)

The remission of debts was peculiar to Solon; it was his great means for confirming the citizens' liberty; for a mere law to give all men equal rights is but useless, if the poor must sacrifice those rights to their debts, and, in the very seats and sanctuaries of equality, the courts of justice, the offices of state, and the public discussions, be more than anywhere at the beck and bidding of the rich.

• Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans
  • p. 228 ("Plutarch's Lives and Writings", Easton Press, 2021, vol. 1)