Good men seek it by the natural means of the virtues; evil men, however, try to achieve the same goal by a variety of concupiscences, and that is surely an unnatural way of seeking the good. Don't you agree?

I who once wrote songs with keen delight am now by sorrow driven to take up melancholy measures. Wounded Muses tell me what I must write, and elegiac verses bathe my face with real tears. Not even terror could drive from me these faithful companions of my long journey. Poetry, which was once the glory of my happy and flourishing youth, is still my comfort in this misery of my old age.

Nothing is miserable but what is thought so, and contrariwise, every estate is happy if he that bears it be content.

One's virtue is all that one truly has, because it is not imperiled by the vicissitudes of fortune.

Love has three kinds of origin, namely: suffering, friendship and love. A human love has a corporal and intellectual origin.

You know when you have found your prince because you not only have a smile on your face but in your heart as well. Love puts the fun in together, the sad in apart, and the joy in a heart. Who would give a law to lovers? Love is unto itself a higher law.

No man can ever be secure until he has been forsaken by Fortune.