We make a goddess of Fortune ... and place her in the highest heaven. But it is not fortune that is exalted and powerful, but we ourselves that are abject and weak.

Cheerfulness ought to be the viaticum vitae of their life to the old; age without cheerfulness is a Lapland winter without a sun.

Villainy that is vigilant will be an overmatch for virtue, if she slumber at her post.

There is a holy love and a holy rage, and our best virtues never glow so brightly as when our passions are excited in the cause. Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues; and the best of us are better when roused.

That extremes beget extremes is an apothegm built on the most profound observation of the human mind.

Deliberate with caution, but act with decision and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.

Professors in every branch of the sciences, prefer their own theories to truth: the reason is that their theories are private property, but truth is common stock.