Make your friends your teachers and mingle the pleasures of conversation with the advantages of instruction.

Honorable beginnings should serve to awaken curiosity, not to heighten people's expectations. We are much better off when reality surpasses our expectations, and something turns out better than we thought it would.

You should aim to be independent of any one vote, of any one fashion, of any one century.

It takes more to make one sage today than it did to make the seven of Greece. And you need more resources to deal with a single person these days than with an entire nation in times past.

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.

Know the great men of your age.

It is therefore an excellent device to acquire knowledge from everybody.