The highest of characters is his who is as ready to pardon the moral errors of mankind as if he were every day guilty of them himself; and as cautious of committing a fault as if he never forgave one.

There is no book so bad that it is not profitable in some part. -Nullus est liber tam malus ut non aliqua parte prosit

Literature is both my joy and my comfort: it can add to every happiness and there is no sorrow it cannot console.

Unfinished paintings are more admired than the finished because the artist's actual thoughts are left visible.

He [Pliny the Elder] used to say that 'no book [etc] was so bad but some good might be got out of it'.

And as in men's bodies, so in government, that disease is most serious which proceeds from the head.

Let us strive the more earnestly therefore to lengthen out our span of life-- life that is poured out like water and falls as the leaf-- if not by action (the means to which lie in another's power), yet in any case by study and research; and since it is not granted us to live long, let us transmit to posterity some memorial that we have at least lived.