No tree becomes rooted and sturdy unless many a wind assails it. For by its very tossing it tightens its grip and plants its roots more securely; the fragile trees are those that have grown in a sunny valley.

Why will no man confess his faults? Because he continues to indulge in them; a man cannot tell his dream till he wakes.

That which Fortune has not given, she cannot take away.

I will have a care of being a slave to myself, for it is a perpetual, a shameful, and the heaviest of all servitudes; and this may be done by moderate desires.

Indolence is stagnation; employment is life.

Who shrinks from knowledge of his calamities but aggravates his fear; troubles half seen, shall torture all the more.

The poor are not the people with less, which is less desirable