The shortest way to arrive at glory should be to do that for conscience which we do for glory. And the virtue of Alexander appears to me with much less vigor in his theater than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure. I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates I cannot.

It would be better to have no laws at all, than to have too many.

Now, of all the benefits that virtue confers upon us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest.

The honor we receive from those that fear us, is not honor; those respects are paid to royalty and not to me.

Lucius Arruntius killed himself, he said, to escape both the future and the past.

We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another's than of our own.

Knowledge is an excellent drug; but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep.