The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

The gardener plants trees, not one berry of which he will ever see: and shall not a public man plant laws, institutions, government, in short, under the same conditions?

Fortune is not only blind herself, but blinds the people she has embraced.

The shifts of fortune test the reliability of friends.

In nothing do humans approach so nearly to the gods as doing good to others.

Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.

The whole of virtue consists in its practice.