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.

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

All fortune is good fortune; for it either rewards, disciplines, amends, or punishes, and so is either useful or just.

Nunc fluens facit tempus,nunc stans facit aeternitatum.(The now that passes produces time, the now that remains produces eternity.)

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

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

For in every ill-turn of fortune the most unhappy sort of unfortunate man is the one who has been happy