A monarch must sometimes rule even himself: he who wants everything must risk very little.
The manner of giving is worth more than the gift.
Your Christians, whom one persecutes in vain, have something in them that surpasses the human. They lead a life of such innocence,that the heavens owe them some recognition: that they arise the stronger the more they are beaten down is hardly the result of common virtues.
A first impulse was never a crime.
Ah, though a Roman, I am not less a man.
Rome alone can resist Rome.