Where power is absent we may find the robe of genius, but we miss the throne.

Kings play at war unfairly with republics; they can only lose some earth, and some creatures they value as little, while republics lose in every soldier a part of themselves.

We cannot be contented because we are happy, and we cannot be happy because we are contented.

Let me take up your metaphor. Friendship is a vase, which, when it is flawed by heat or violence or accident, may as well be broken at once; it can never be trusted after. The more graceful and ornamental it was, the more clearly do we discern the hopelessness of restoring it to its former state. Coarse stones, if they are fractured, may be cemented again; precious stones, never.

Those who speak against the great do not usually speak from morality, but from envy.

I sometimes think that the most plaintive ditty has brought a fuller joy and of longer duration to its composer that the conquest of Persia to the Macedonian.

If in argument we can make a man angry with us, we have drawn him from his vantage ground and overcome him.