“The shifts of fortune test the reliability of friends.”

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

Your enemies can kill you, but only your friends can hurt you.

To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die.

No power on earth, if it labours beneath the burden of fear, can possibly be strong enough to survive.

He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.

To teach is a necessity, to please is a sweetness, to persuade is a victory.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself: if you heed yourself, you’ll never go wrong.

Knowledge which is divorced from justice may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.

What is sweeter than lettered ease?

Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either.

Nothing cruel is in fact beneficial; for cruelty is extremely hostile to the nature of man, which we ought to follow.

To be content with what we possess is the greatest and most secure of riches.

The closer the collapse of the Empire, the crazier its laws are.

Never injure a friend, even in jest.