And where the rewards for merit are greatest, there are found the best citizens.

You can now, if you choose, employ your present success to advantage, so as to keep what you have got and gain honour and reputation besides, and you can avoid the mistake of those who meet with an extraordinary piece of good fortune, and are led on by hope to grasp continually at something further, through having already succeeded without expecting it.

They are surely to be esteemed the bravest spirits who, having the clearest sense of both the pains and pleasures of life, do not on that account shrink from danger.

Men's indignation, it seems, is more exited by legal wrong than by violent wrong; the first looks like being cheated by an equal, the second like being compelled by a superior.

For they had learned that true safety was to be found in long previous training, and not in eloquent exhortations uttered when they were going into action.

Mankind apparently find it easier to drive away adversity than to retain prosperity.

Three of the gravest failings, want of sense, of courage, or of vigilance.