So live with men as if God saw you and speak to God, as if men heard you.

Virtue depends partly upon training and partly upon practice; you must learn first, and then strengthen your learning by action. If this be true, not only do the doctrines of wisdom help us but the precepts also, which check and banish our emotions by a sort of official decree.

Not a soul takes thought how well he may live- only how long: yet a good life might be everybody's, a long one can be nobody's.

Happy he whoe'er, content with the common lot, with safe breeze hugs the shore, and, fearing to trust his skiff to the wider sea, with unambitious oar keeps close to the land.

He who begs timidly courts a refusal.

The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty.

Speech devoted to truth should be straightforward and plain