Ambassadors are the eye and ear of states.

Since there is nothing so well worth having as friends, never lose a chance to make them.

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

I know no man who feels deeper disgust than I do at the ambition, avarice, and profligacy of the priesthood, as well because every one of these vices is odious in itself, as because each of them separately and all of them together are utterly abhorrent in men making profession of a life dedicated to God.

Affairs that depend on many rarely succeed.

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

Keep your eye fixed not so much on what they [people] ought in reason to do, as on what they are likely to do based on their disposition and habits.