The point is, not how long you live, but how nobly you live.

Everything in art is but a copy of nature.

If you don't know what port you are sailing to, no wind is favourable.

There is more heroism in self-denial than in deeds of arms.

There is as much greatness of mind in the owning of a good turn as in the doing of it; and we must no more force a requital out of season than be wanting in 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.

In war there is no prize for runner-up.