The causes of events are ever more interesting than the events themselves.

Promises are not to be kept, if the keeping of them is to prove harmful to those to whom you have made them.

To be endowed with strength by nature, to be actuated by the powers of the mind, and to have a certain spirit almost divine infused into you.

Our liberality should not exceed our ability.

Nature ordains that a man should wish the good of every man, whoever he may be, for this very reason that he is a man.

It is the soul itself which sees and hears, and not those parts which are, as it were, but windows to the soul.

It is the act of a bad man to deceive by falsehood.