Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever. For what is the time of a man, except it be interwoven with that memory of ancient things of a superior age?

Nothing so cements and holds together all the parts of a society as faith or credit, which can never be kept up unless men are under some force or necessity of honestly paying what they owe to one another.

History is indeed the witness of the times, the light of truth.

It has seemed to be more necessary to have regard to the weight of words rather than to their number.

We should be careful that our benevolence does not exceed our means.

To wonder at nothing when it happens, to consider nothing impossible before it has come to pass.

I cannot find a faithful message-bearer," he wrote to his friend, the scholar Atticus. "How few are they who are able to carry a rather weighty letter without lightening it by reading.