When a government becomes powerful it is destructive, extravagant and violent; it is an usurer which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honorable men of their substance, for votes with which to perpetuate itself.

A letter does not blush.

Within the character of the citizen, lies the welfare of the nation.

Every stage of human life, except the last, is marked out by certain and defined limits; old age alone has no precise and determinate boundary.

For how many things, which for our own sake we should never do, do we perform for the sake of our friends.

Let art, then, imitate nature, find what she desires, and follow as she directs. For in invention nature is never last, education never first; rather the beginnings of things arise from natural talent, and ends are reached by discipline.

Frivolity is inborn, conceit acquired by education.