If there is anything good about nobility it is that it enforces the necessity of avoiding degeneracy.

So it follows that those who have reason have freedom to will or not to will, although this freedom is not equal in all of them. [...] human souls are more free when they persevere in the contemplation of the mind of God, less free when they descend to the corporeal, and even less free when they are entirely imprisoned in earthly flesh and blood.

As far as possible, join faith to reason.

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.

He who has calmly reconciled his life to fate ... can look fortune in the face.

In other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature, but in men it is a vice.

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