Man learns more readily and remembers more willingly what excites his ridicule than what deserves esteem and respect.

All men do not, in fine, admire or love the same thing.

Nature is harmony in discord.

Work at it night and day.

Death's dark way Must needs be trodden once, however we pause.

This was my prayer: an adequate portion of land with a garden and a spring of water and a small wood to complete the picture.

The aim of the poet is to inform or delight, or to combine together, in what he says, both pleasure and applicability to life. In instructing, be brief in what you say in order that your readers may grasp it quickly and retain it faithfully. Superfluous words simply spill out when the mind is already full. Fiction invented in order to please should remain close to reality.