I never met a man who thought his thinking was faulty.

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.

The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.

Judgement holds in me a magisterial seat, at least it carefully tries to. It lets my feelings go their way, both hatred and friendship, even the friendship I bear myself, without being changed and corrupted by them.

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 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.

The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre.