A great step toward independence is a good-humoured stomach.

The stomach begs and clamors, and listens to no precepts. And yet it is not an obdurate creditor; for it is dismissed with small payment if you give it only what you owe, and not as much as you can.

While crime is punished it yet increases.

To see a man fearless in dangers, untainted with lusts, happy in adversity, composed in a tumult, and laughing at all those things which are generally either coveted or feared, all men must acknowledge that this can be from nothing else but a beam of divinity that influences a mortal body.

He invites the commission of a crime who does not forbid it, when it is in his power to do so.

There is none made so great, but he may both need the help and service, and stand in fear of the power and unkindness, even of the meanest of mortals.

Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.