Fire proves gold, adversity proves men.

To strive with an equal is dangerous; with a superior, mad; with an inferior, degrading.

Luck never made a man wise.

The rust of the mind is the destruction of genius.

That which takes effect by chance is not an art.

No good thing is pleasant without friends to share it.

Only a great man, believe me, and one whose excellence rises far above human failings, will not allow anything to be stolen from his own span of time, and his life is very long precisely because he has devoted to himself entirely any time that became available. None of it lay uncultivated and idle, none was under another man's control, for guarding it most jealously, he found nothing worth exchanging for his own precious time.