» There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.
» Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.
» Calamity is virtue's opportunity.
» There are no greater wretches in the world than many of those whom people in general take to be happy.
» Happy the man who can endure the highest and the lowest fortune. He, who has endured such vicissitudes with equanimity, has deprived misfortune of its power.
» As for old age, embrace and love it. It abounds with pleasure if you know how to use it. The gradually declining years are among the sweetest in a man's life, and I maintain that, even when they have reached the extreme limit, they have their pleasure still.
» There is nothing more despicable than an old man who has no other proof than his age to offer of his having lived long in the world.
» It is the constant fault and inseparable evil quality of ambition, that it never looks behind it.
» He who boasts of his descent, praises the deed of another.
» No one is better born than another, unless they are born with better abilities and a more amiable disposition.