Whenever fortune wishes to joke, she lifts people from what is humble to the highest extremity of affairs.

But with what incessant and grievous ills is old age surrounded!

Nature confesses that she has bestowed on the human race hearts of softest mould, in that she has given us tears.

The itch of scribbling.

The short bloom of our brief and narrow life flies fast away. While we are calling for flowers and wine and women, old age is upon us.

Many commit the same crimes with a very different result. One bears a cross for his crime; another a crown.

Let nothing offensive to the ear or the eye enter these thresholds, within which youth dwells.