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

Inconsistency is my very essence; it is the game I never cease to play as I turn my wheel in its ever changing circle, filled with joy as I bring the top to the bottom and the bottom to the top

Music is part of us, and either ennobles or degrades our behavior.

For in all adversity of fortune the worst sort of misery is to have been happy.

...Whose souls, albeit in a cloudy memory, yet seek back their good, but, like drunk men, know not the road home.

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

In every kind of adversity, the bitterest part of a man's affliction is to remember that he once was happy.