For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in every way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits.

I seek in books only to give myself pleasure by honest amusement; or if I study, I seek only the learning that treats of the knowledge of myself and instructs me in how to die well and live well.

The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold...The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbor creates a war betwixt princes.

Is there a polity better ordered, the offices better distributed, and more inviolably observed and maintained, than that of bees?

Though we may be learned by another's knowledge, we can never be wise but by our own experience.

The honor we receive from those that fear us, is not honor; those respects are paid to royalty and not to me.

No wonder, said an Ancient, that chance has so much power over us, since it is by chance that we live.