No profession or occupation is more pleasing than the military; a profession or exercise both noble in execution (for the strongest, most generous and proudest of all virtues is true valor) and noble in its cause. No utility either more just or universal than the protection of the repose or defense of the greatness of one's country. The company and daily conversation of so many noble, young and active men cannot but be well-pleasing to you.

Experience has further taught me this, that we ruin ourselves by impatience.

The first lessons with which we should irrigate his mind should be those which teach him to know himself, and to know how to die ... and to live.

There is nothing in which a horse's power is better revealed than in a neat, clean stop.

The profit we possess after study is to have become better and wiser.

We should be similarly wary of accepting common opinions; we should judge them by the ways of reason not by popular vote.

What a man hates, he takes seriously.