The beginning is the chiefest part of any work.

Arguments, like men, are often pretenders.

Harmony is a symphony, and symphony is an agreement; but an agreement of disagreements while they disagree there cannot be; you cannot harmonize that which disagrees.

No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew it was the greatest of evils.

The makers of fortunes have a second love of money as a creation of their own, resembling the affection of authors for their own poems, or of parents for their children, besides that natural love of it for the sake of use and profit.

Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.

A State would be happy where philosophers were kings, or kings philosophers.