Pay no heed to those who tell you that they have relinquished place and power of their own accord, and from their love of quiet. For almost always they have been brought to this retirement by their insufficiency and against their will.

Let no one trust so entirely to natural prudence as to persuade himself that it will suffice to guide him without help from experience.

How much luckier than all the rest of mankind are the astrologers who, if they tell one truth among a hundred lies, obtain so much credit that even their lies are believed.

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

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.

Ambassadors are the eye and ear of states.

...be more guided by hope than fear.