Compassion and shame come over one who considers how precarious is the origin of the proudest of living beings: often the smell of a lately extinguished lamp is enough to cause a miscarriage. And to think that from such a frail beginning a tyrant or butcher may be born! You who trust in your physical strength, who embrace the gifts of fortune and consider yourself not their ward but their son, you who have a domineering spirit, you who consider yourself a god as soon as success swells your breast, think how little could have destroyed you!

Let honor be to us as strong an obligation as necessity is to others.

We neglect those things which are under our very eyes, and heedless of things within our grasp, pursue those which are afar off.

There is always something new out of Africa.

It is this earth that, like a kind mother, receives us at our birth, and sustains us when born; it is this alone, of all the elements around us, that is never found an enemy of man.

As land is improved by sowing it with various seeds, so is the mind by exercising it with different studies.

Envy always implies conscious inferiority wherever it resides.