The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.

I am driven out of fatherlands and motherlands. Thus I now love only my children's land, yet undiscovered, in the farthest sea; for this I bid my sails search and search.

Against war one might say that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished malicious. In its favor, that in producing these two effects it barbarizes, and so makes the combatants more natural. For culture it is a sleep or a wintertime, and man emerges from it stronger for good and for evil.

Supposing truth is a woman -- what then?

It is the privilege of greatness to confer intense happiness with insignificant gifts.

You may lie with your mouth, but with the mouth you make as you do so you none the less tell the truth.

Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong.