The easy, gentle, and sloping path . . . is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.

There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.

I love those historians that are either very simple or most excellent. Such as are between both (which is the most common fashion), it is they that spoil all; they will needs chew our meat for us and take upon them a law to judge, and by consequence to square and incline the story according to their fantasy.

There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.

It is a disaster that wisdom forbids you to be satisfied with yourself and always sends you away dissatisfied and fearful, whereas stubbornness and foolhardiness fill their hosts with joy and assurance.

Satiety comes of too frequent repetition and he who will not give himself leisure to be thirsty can never find the true pleasure of drinking

Ambition sufficiently plagues her proselytes, by keeping themselves always in show, like the statue of a public place.