The laws of conscience, though we ascribe them to nature, actually come from custom.

It is very easy to accuse a government of imperfection, for all mortal things are full of it.

I may indeed very well happen to contradict myself; but truth, as Demades said, I do not contradict.

Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.

There is nothing of evil in life for him who rightly comprehends that death is no evil; to know how to die delivers us from all subjection and constraint.

Poetry reproduces an indefinable mood that is more amorous than love itself. Venus is not so beautiful all naked, alive, and panting, as she is here in Virgil.

To philosophize is to doubt.