No one but yourself knows whether you are cowardly and cruel, or loyal and devout; others do not see you; they surmise you by uncertain conjectures; they perceive not so much your nature as your art.

The perpetual work of your life is but to lay the foundation of death.

Even opinion is of force enough to make itself to be espoused at the expense of life.

We have so much ill fortune as inconstancy, or so much bad purpose as folly, we are not so full of evil as we are of inanity; we are not so wretched as we are base

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.

Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it? .. But in truth I know nothing about the philosophy of education except this: that the greatest and the most important difficulty known to human learning seems to lie in that area which treats how to bring up children and how to educate them.

Obstinacy and contention are common qualities, most appearing in, and best becoming, a mean and illiterate soul.