A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?

It is certain that memory contains not only philosophy, but all the arts and all that appertain to the use of life.

No well-informed person has declared a change of opinion to be inconstancy.

Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.

Friendship is nothing else than entire fellow feeling as to all things human and divine with mutual good-will and affection; and I doubt whether anything better than this, wisdom alone excepted, has been given to man.

So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.

Rashness attends youth, as prudence does old age.