Unless a variety of opinions are laid before us, we have no opportunity of selection, but are bound of necessity to adopt the particular view which may have been brought forward.

A man calumniated is doubly injured -- first by him who utters the calumny, and then by him who believes it.

For of those [cities] that were great in earlier times, most of them have now become small, while those which were great in my time were small formerly.

It is a law of nature that fainthearted men should be the fruit of luxurious countries, for we never find that the same soil produces delicacies and heroes.

I am bound to tell what I am told, but not in every case to believe it.

Great things are won by great dangers.

The secret of success is that it is not the absence of failure, but the absence of envy.