If you want it to be so, history can be a waste of time; it can also be, if you want it to be so, a study bearing fruit beyond price.

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.

Princes give mee sufficiently, if they take nothing from me, and doe me much good, if they doe me no hurt: it is all I require of them.

Lucius Arruntius killed himself, he said, to escape both the future and the past.

There is a huge gulf between the man who follows the conventions and laws of his country and the man who sets out to regiment them and to change them.

It is not necessity but abundance which produces greed.

Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.