Forms of government become established of themselves. They shape themselves, they are not created. We may give them strength and consistency, but we cannot call them into being. Let us rest assured that the form of government can never be a matter of choice: it is almost always a matter of necessity.

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.

Ornaments were invented by modesty.

There are people who are virtuous only in a piece-meal way; virtue is a fabric from which they never make themselves a whole garment.

Love and fear. Everything the father of a family says must inspire one or the other.

When a nation gives birth to a man who is able to produce a great thought, another is born who is able to understand and admire it.

There are those to whom one must advise madness.