To distract myself from tiresome thoughts, I have only to resort to books; they easily draw my mind to themselves and away from other things.

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

Is it reasonable that even the arts should take advantage of and profit by our natural stupidity and feebleness of mind?

It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness. A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength.

If you have known how to compose your life, you have done a great deal more than the person who knows how to compose a book. You have done more than the one who has taken cities and empires.

The height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise; so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and the innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own; and it is by order and good conduct, and not by force, that it is to be acquired.

Pride dwells in the thought; the tongue can have but a very little share in it.