If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

Everything in nature is a cause from which there flows some effect.

Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak. But experience more than sufficiently teaches that men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues.

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

Blessed are the weak who think that they are good because they have no claws.

He whose honor depends on the opinion of the mob must day by day strive with the greatest anxiety, act and scheme in order to retain his reputation. For the mob is varied and inconsistent, and therefore if a reputation is not carefully preserved it dies quickly.

No to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand.