Stern is the visage of necessity.

If you cannot please everyone with your deeds and your art, please a few. To please many is bad.

To gain a crown by fighting is great, to reject it divine.

A sublime soul can rise to all kinds of greatness, but by an effort; it can tear itself from all bondage, to all that limits and constrains it, but only by strength of will. Consequently the sublime soul is only free by broken efforts.

As inclination changes, thus ebbs and flows the unstable tide of public judgment.

Nothing leads to good that is not natural.

Let no one despair, even though in the darkest night the last star of hope may disappear.