One should never permit a disorder to persist in order to avoid a war, for wars cannot be avoided and can only be deferred to the advantage of others.

He who is the cause of another's advancement is thereby the cause of his own ruin.

Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces.

We have not seen great things done in our time except by those who have been considered mean; the rest have failed.

If the present be compared with the remote past, it is easily seen that in all cities and in all peoples there are the same desires and the same passions as there always were.

It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.