What is common to many is least taken care of, for all men have greater regard for what is their own than what they possess in common with others.

Art takes nature as its model.

It is the repeated performance of just and temperate actions that produces virtue.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

Those who believe that all virtue is to be found in their own party principles push matters to extremes; they do not consider that disproportion destroys a state.

In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.

Victory is plesant, not only to those who love to conquer, bot to all; for there is produced an idea of superiority, which all with more or less eagerness desire.