What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.

We do not imitate, but are a model to others.

Trees, though they are cut and loped, grow up again quickly, but if men are destroyed, it is not easy to get them again

Having knowledge but lacking the power to express it clearly is no better than never having any ideas at all.

Just because you are not interested in politics, does not mean that politics is not interested in you.

For a man's counsel cannot have equal weight or worth, when he alone has no children to risk in the general danger.

I am of opinion that national greatness is more for the advantage of private citizens, than any individual well-being coupled with public humiliation. A man may be personally ever so well off, and yet if his country be ruined he must be ruined with it; whereas a flourishing commonwealth always affords chances of salvation to unfortunate individuals.