The honor of the conquest is rated by the difficulty.

Each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice; for indeed it seems we have no other test of truth and reason than the example and pattern of the opinions and customs of the country we live in

I look upon the too good opinion that man has of himself, as the nursing mother of all false opinions, both public and private.

A man must become wise at his own expense.

Love is like playing the piano. First you must learn to play by the rules, then you must forget the rules and play from your heart. If I were pressed to say why I loved him, I feel that my only reply could be: Because it was he, because it was I.

Is there a polity better ordered, the offices better distributed, and more inviolably observed and maintained, than that of bees?

Poetry reproduces an indefinable mood that is more amorous than love itself. Venus is not so beautiful all naked, alive, and panting, as she is here in Virgil.