Everyone has the obligation to ponder well his own specific traits of character. He must also regulate them adequately and not wonder whether someone else's traits might suit him better. The more definitely his own a man's character is, the better it fits him.

We are not born, we do not live for ourselves alone; our country, our friends, have a share in us.

The cultivation of the mind is a kind of food supplied for the soul of man.

We ought to regard amiability as the quality of woman, dignity that of man.

The house should derive dignity from the master, not the master from the house.

That which is usually called dotage is not the weak point of all old men, but only of such as are distinguished by their levity.

The following passage is one of those cited by Copernicus himself in his preface to De Revolutionibus: "The Syracusan Hicetas, as Theophrastus asserts, holds the view that the heaven, sun, moon, stars, and in short all of the things on high are stationary, and that nothing in the world is in motion except the earth, which by revolving and twisting round its axis with extreme velocity produces all the same results as would be produced if the earth were stationary and the heaven in motion. . . ."