The ideal man is his own best friend and takes delight in privacy.

One swallow does not make a spring, nor does one fine day.

Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.

A friend is a second self, so that our consciousness of a friend's existence...makes us more fully conscious of our own existence.

Some men turn every quality or art into a means of making money; this they conceive to be the end, and to the promotion of the end all things must contribute.

People generally despise where they flatter.

Character is revealed through action.