“It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other.”

I know and love the good, yet, ah! the worst pursue.

Virtue is health, vice is sickness.

Often have I wondered with much curiosity as to our coming into this world and what will follow our departure.

How difficult it is to save the bark of reputation from the rocks of ignorance.

An equal doom clipp’d Time’s blest wings of peace.

Where are the numerous constructions erected by Agrippa, of which only the Pantheon remains? Where are the splendorous palaces of the emperors?

I saw the tracks of angels in the earth: the beauty of heaven walking by itself on the world.

And tears are heard within the harp I touch.

How fortune brings to earth the over-sure!

I have taken pride in others, never in myself.

Events appear sad, pleasant, or painful, not because they are so in reality, but because we believe them to be so and the light in which we look at them depends upon our own judgment.

From thought to thought, from mountain peak to mountain. Love leads me on; for I can never still My trouble on the world’s well beaten ways.

And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not.

You keep to your own ways and leave mine to me.

It may be only glory that we seek here, but I persuade myself that, as long as we remain here, that is right. Another glory awaits us in heaven and he who reaches there will not wish even to think of earthly fame.

The time will come when every change shall cease, This quick revolving wheel shall rest in peace: No summer then shall glow, not winter freeze; Nothing shall be to come, and nothing past, But an eternal now shall ever last.

Each misfortune you encounter will carry in it the seed of tomorrow’s good luck.

Should I be grateful or should I curse the fact that despite all misfortune I can still feel love, an unearthly love but still for earthly objects.

A lucky man is rarer than a white crow.

Some men make fortunes, but not to enjoy them for, blinded by avarice, they live to make fortunes.

Obviously the most beautiful fate, the most wonderful good fortune that can happen to any human being, is to be paid for doing that which he passionately loves to do.

Whenever fortune wishes to joke, she lifts people from what is humble to the highest extremity of affairs.

Common sense among men of fortune is rare.

Fortune and love favor the brave.