Of all the rewards of virtue, . . . the most splendid is fame, for it is fame alone that can offer us the memory of posterity.

This seems to be advanced as the surest basis for our belief in the existence of gods, that there is no race so uncivilized, no one in the world so barbarous that his mind has no inkling of a belief in gods.

Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offense.

A true friend is a sort of second self.

When time and need require, we should resist with all our might, and prefer death to slavery and disgrace.

When I consider the wonderful activity of the mind, so great a memory of what is past, and such a capacity of penetrating into the future: when I behold such a number of arts and sciences, and such a multitude of discoveries hence arising,--I believe and am firmly persuaded that a nature which contains so many things within itself cannot be mortal.

Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either.