Men decide far more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion or some other inward emotion, than by reality, authority, any legal standard, judicial precedent, or statute.

Nor am I ashamed, as some are, to confess my ignorance of those matters with which I am unacquainted.

Fortune, not wisdom, rules lives.

No power is strong enough to be lasting, if it labours under the weight of fear.

You might as well take the sun out of the sky as friendship from life: for the immortal gods have given us nothing better or more delightful.

I never heard of an old man forgetting where he had buried his money. Old people remember what interests them: the dates fixed for their lawsuits, and the names of their debtors and creditors.

What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation?