Precepts are the rules by which we ought to square our lives. When they are contracted into sentences, they strike the affections; whereas admonition is only blowing of the coal.
Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man’s power to live long.
Epicurus says, “gratitude is a virtue that has commonly profit annexed to it.” And where is the virtue that has not? But still the virtue is to be valued for itself, and not for the profit that attends it.
