Water, earth, air, fire, and the other parts of this structure of mine are no more instruments of your life than instruments of your death. Why do you fear your last day? It contributes no more to your death than each of the others. The last step does not cause the fatigue, but reveals it. All days travel toward death, the last one reaches it.

In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk - they are all part of the curriculum.

God is favorable to those whom he makes to die by degrees; 'tis the only benefit of old age. The last death will be so much the less painful: it will kill but a quarter of a man or but half a one at most.

We do not correct the man we hang; we correct others by him.

Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.

I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.

There is not one of us that would not be worse than kings, if so continually corrupted as they are with a sort of vermin called flatterers.