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.

Is there a polity better ordered, the offices better distributed, and more inviolably observed and maintained, than that of bees?

Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.

The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learnt to die has forgot to serve.

There is no so wretched and coarse a soul wherein some particular faculty is not seen to shine.

It is fear that I stand most in fear of, in sharpness it exceeds every other feeling.

To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.