“Benefits received are a delight to us as long as we think we can requite them; when that possibility is far exceeded, they are repaid with hatred instead of gratitude.”

Miseram pacem vel bello bene mutari. Even war is preferable to a shameful peace.

Experience teaches. [Lat., Experientia docet.]

Even the bravest men are frightened by sudden terrors.

Neglected, calumny soon expires, show that you are hurt, and you give it the appearance of truth.

So as you go into battle, remember your ancestors and remember your descendants.

Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth.

It belongs to human nature to hate those you have injured.

The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government.

By punishing men of talent we confirm their authority.

It is found by experience that admirable laws and right precedents among the good have their origin in the misdeeds of others.

Rumor is not always wrong

All things atrocious and shameless flock from all parts to Rome.

The lust of fame is the last that a wise man shakes off.

Reckless adventure is the fool’s hazard.

Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.

The desire for glory clings even to the best men longer than any other passion.

Sensual is everything that refers to the delight of the senses. And that’s what artists do, is stimulate the senses in any possible way.

Our delight in any particular study, art, or science rises and improves in proportion to the application which we bestow upon it. Thus, what was at first an exercise becomes at length an entertainment.

The degradation which characterizes the state into which you plunge him by punishing him pleases, amuses, and delights him.

How delightful are the pleasures of the imagination! In those delectable moments, the whole world is ours; not a single creature resists us.

We have had an unspeakably delightful journey, one of those journeys which seem to divide one’s life in two, by the new ideas they suggest and the new views of interest they open.

The imagination is the spur of delights… all depends upon it, it is the mainspring of everything; now, is it not by means of the imagination one knows joy? Is it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?

Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight.

We delight in one knowable thing, which comprehends all that is knowable; in one apprehensible, which draws together all that can be apprehended; in a single being that includes all, above all in the one which is itself the all.