For titles do not reflect honor on men, but rather men on their titles.

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

One arises from a low to a high station more often by using fraud instead of force.

How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation.

To be feared is much safer then to be loved.

A multitude is strong while it holds together, but so soon as each of those who compose it begins ro think of his own private danger, it becomes weak and contemptible.

And when he is obliged to take the life of any one, to do so when there is a proper justification and manifest reason for it; but above all he must abstain from taking the property of others, for men forget more easily the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony.