I find no quality so easy for a man to counterfeit as devotion, though his life and manner are not conformable to it; the essence of it is abstruse and occult, but the appearances easy and showy.

Pythagoras used to say that life resembles the Olympic Games: a few people strain their muscles to carry off a prize; others bring trinkets to sell to the crowd for gain; and some there are, and not the worst, who seek no other profit than to look at the show and see how and why everything is done; spectators of the life of other people in order to judge and regulate their own.

The truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man persuades another man to believe.

The only good histories are those written by those who had command in the events they describe.

Virtue shuns ease as a companion. It demands a rough and thorny path.

The memory represents to us not what we choose but what it pleases.

To honor him whom we have made is far from honoring him that hath made us.