Modern writers are the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients.

See nations slowly wise, and meanly just, to buried merit raise the tardy bust.

Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others.

To those who have lived long together, everything heard and everything seen recalls some pleasure communicated, some benefit conferred, some petty quarrel or some slight endearment. Esteem of great powers, or amiable qualities newly discovered may embroider a day or a week, but a friendship of twenty years is interwoven with the texture of life.

Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.

As to the rout that is made about people who are ruined by extravagance, it is no matter to the nation that some individuals suffer. When so much general productive exertion is the consequence of luxury, the nation does not care though there are debtors; nay, they would not care though their creditors were there too.

To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege; to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack.