To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.

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.

The world is but a school of inquisition; it is not who shall enter the ring, but who shall run the best courses.

Opinion is a powerful party, bold, and without measure.

The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.

He that had never seen a river, imagined the first he met with to be the sea.

.. since it was true that study, even when done properly, can only teach us what wisdom, right conduct and determination consist in, they wanted to put their children directly in touch with actual cases, teaching them not by hearsay but by actively assaying them, vigorously molding and forming them not merely by word and precept but chiefly by deeds and examples, so that wisdom should not be something which the soul knows but the soul's very essence and temperament, not something acquired but a natural property.