Everything that is popular, it has been said, deserves the attention of philosophers: and this is for the obvious reason, that although it may not be of any worth in itself, yet it characterizes the people.

I honor health as the first muse, and sleep as the condition of health. Sleep benefits mainly by the sound health it produces; incidentally also by dreams, into whose farrago a divine lesson is sometimes slipped.

Nothing can be colder than his head, when the lightnings of his imagination are playing in the sky.

Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.

Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow.

The love that you withhold is the pain that you carry.

Persecution readily knits friendship between its victims.