Our thoughts are always elsewhere; we are stayed and supported by the hope for a better life, or by the hope that our children will turn out well, or that our name will be famous in the future, or that we shall escape the evils of this life, or that vengeance threatens those who are the cause of our death.

There is nothing which so poisons princes as flattery, nor anything whereby wicked men more easily obtain credit and favor with them.

Confidence in others' honesty is no light testimony of one's own integrity.

There is nothing useless in nature; not even uselessness itself

Most men are rich in borrowed sufficiency: a man may very well say a good thing, give a good answer, cite a good sentence, without at all seeing the force of either the one or the other.

We every day and every hour say things of another that we might more properly say of ourselves, could we but apply our observations to our own concerns.

Ambition is not a vice of little people.