Affairs that depend on many rarely succeed.

There is nothing so fleeting as the memory of benefits received.

If you attempt certain things at the right time, they are easy to accomplish - in fact, they almost get done by themselves. If you undertake them before the time is right, not only will they fail, but they will often become impossible to accomplish even when the time would have been right.

...be more guided by hope than fear.

Waste no time with revolutions that do not remove the causes of your complaints but simply change the faces of those in charge.

Ambassadors are the eye and ear of states.

Be careful how you do one man a pleasure which must needs occasion equal displeasure in another. For he who is thus slighted will not forget, but will think the offence to himself the greater in that another profits by it; while he who receives the pleasure will either not remember it, or will consider the favour done him less than it really was.