Difficulty is a coin the learned make use of like jugglers, to conceal the inanity of their art.

Why dost thou complain of this world? It detains thee not; thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in pain.

It is equally pointless to weep because we won't be alive a hundred years from now as that we were not here a hundred years ago.

My errors are by now natural and incorrigible; but the good that worthy men do the public by making themselves imitable, I shall perhaps do by making myself evitable.

Fortune does us neither good nor hurt; she only presents us the matter, and the seed, which our soul, more powerfully than she, turns and applies as she best pleases; being the sole cause and sovereign mistress of her own happy or unhappy condition.

I neither complain of the past, nor do I fear the future.

A man should ever, as much as in him lieth, be ready booted to take his journey, and above all things look he have then nothing to do but with himself.