I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.

Freedom is the first wish of our heart; freedom is the first blessing of nature; and unless we bind ourselves with voluntary chains of interest or passion, we advance in freedom as we advance in years

[The] vain and transitory scenes of human greatness are unworthy of a serious thought.

The virtue of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was of a severer and more laborious kind. It was the well-earned harvest of many a learned conference, of many a patient lecture, and many a midnight lucubration. At the age of twelve years, he embraced the rigid system of the Stoics, which taught him to submit his body to his mind, his passions to his reason; to consider virtue as the only good, vice as the only evil, all things external as things indifferent.

The fabric of a mighty state, which has been reared by the labours of successive ages, could not be overturned by the misfortune of a single day, if the fatal power of the imagination did not exaggerate the real measure of the calamity.

Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition.

The communication of ideas requires a similitude of thought and language . . .