Don't be afraid to say what you are not afraid to think

The most ordinary things, the most common and familiar, if we could see them in their true light, would turn out to be the grandest miracles.

I am disgusted with innovation, in whatever guise, and with reason, for I have seen very harmful effects of it.

Whom conscience, ne'er asleep, Wounds with incessant strokes, not loud, but deep.

The shortest way to arrive at glory should be to do that for conscience which we do for glory. And the virtue of Alexander appears to me with much less vigor in his theater than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure. I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates I cannot.

The births of all things are weak and tender and therefore we should have our eyes intent on beginnings.

Lay a beam between these two towers of such width as we need to walk on: there is no philosophical wisdom of such great firmness that it can give us courage to walk on it as we should if it were on the ground.