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.

Glory and repose are things that cannot possibly inhabit in one and the same place.

The most beautiful lives, to my mind, are those that conform to the common human pattern, with order, but without miracle and without eccentricity.

The smallest annoyances, disturb us the most.

I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that tied them together.

It is the part of cowardliness, and not of virtue, to seek to squat itself in some hollow lurking hole, or to hide herself under some massive tomb, thereby to shun the strokes of fortune.

The shortest way to arrive at glory should be to do that for conscience which we do for glory. And the virtue of Alexander appears to me with much less vigor in his theater than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure. I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates I cannot.