The most imperious masters over their own servants are at the same time the most abject slaves to the servants of others.

Real improvement is of slow growth only.

We are born to lose and to perish, to hope and to fear, to vex ourselves and others; and there is no antidote against a common calamity but virtue; for the foundation of true joy is in the conscience.

While we wait for life, life passes

There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living; there is nothing harder to learn.

Virtue is that perfect good, which is the complement of a happy life; the only immortal thing that belongs to mortality.

The law of the pleasure in having done anything for another is, that the one almost immediately forgets having given, and the other remembers eternally having received.