He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.

Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee.

Virtue can have naught to do with ease. . . . It craves a steep and thorny path.

For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in every way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits.

A well-bred man is always sociable and complaisant.

And one might therefore say of me that in this book I have only made up a bunch of other people's flowers, and that of my own I have only provided the string that ties them together.

Travelling through the world produces a marvellous clarity in the judgment of men. We are all of us confined and enclosed within ourselves, and see no farther than the end of our nose.