The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.

To die in order to avoid the pains of poverty, love, or anything that is disagreeable, is not the part of a brave man, but of a coward.

Those that deem politics beneath their dignity are doomed to be governed by those of lesser talents.

We laugh at that which we cannot bear to face.

A friend to all is a friend to none.

If purpose, then, is inherent in art, so is it in Nature also. The best illustration is the case of a man being his own physician, for Nature is like that - agent and patient at once.