Fortune makes our virtues and vices visible, just as light does the objects of sight.

Men have written in the most convincing manner to prove that death is no evil, and this opinion has been confirmed on a thousand celebrated occasions by the weakest of men as well as by heroes. Even so I doubt whether any sensible person has ever believed it, and the trouble men take to convince others as well as themselves that they do shows clearly that it is no easy undertaking.

People would not long remain in social life if they were not the dupes of each other.

To achieve greatness one should live as if they will never die.

Magnanimity is sufficiently defined by its name, nevertheless one can say it is the good sense of pride, the most noble way of receiving praise.

There are few occasions when we should make a bad bargain by giving up the good on condition that no ill was said of us.

The truest comparison we can make of love is to liken it to a fever; we have no more power over the one than the other, either as to its violence or duration.