The ancients, sir, are the ancients, and we are the people of today.
One cannot but mistrust a prospect of felicity: one must enjoy it before one can believe in it.
True, Heaven prohibits certain pleasures; but one can generally negotiate a compromise.
Esteem must be founded on some sort of preference. Bestow it on everybody and it ceases to have any meaning at all.
Even Rome cannot grant us a dispensation from death.
Gold makes the ugly beautiful.