It's up to brave hearts, sir, to be patient when things are going badly, as well as being happy when they're going well ... For I've heard that what they call fortune is a flighty woman who drinks too much, and, what's more, she's blind, so she can't see what she's doing, and she doesn't know who she's knocking over or who she's raising up.

There is no greater folly in the world than for a man to despair.

It is one thing to write as poet and another to write as a historian: the poet can recount or sing about things not as they were, but as they should have been, and the historian must write about them not as they should have been, but as they were, without adding or subtracting anything from the truth.

Blessed be he who invented sleep, a cloak that covers all a man's thoughts.

Controlling my temper is important, ... Sometimes it's hard, but I try.

He preaches well that lives well

We ought to love our Maker for His own sake, without either hope of good or fear of pain.