Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.

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

Laws gain their authority from actual possession and custom: it is perilous to go back to their origins; laws, like our rivers, get greater and nobler as they roll along: follow them back upstream to their sources and all you find is a tiny spring, hardly recognizable; as time goes by it swells with pride and grows in strength.

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.

Indeed, there is no such thing as an altogether ugly woman — or altogether beautiful.

A liar would be brave toward God, while he is a coward toward men; for a lie faces God, and shrinks from man.

The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.