In my youth I thought of writing a satire on mankind! but now in my age I think I should write an apology for them.
Nature is harmony in discord.
To marvel at nothing is just about the one and only thing, Numicius, that can make a man happy and keep him that way.
Often you must turn your stylus to erase, if you hope to write anything worth a second reading.
For everything divine and human, virtue, fame, and honor, now obey the alluring influence of riches.
A wise God shrouds the future in obscure darkness.
Those who seek for much are left in want of much. Happy is he to whom God has given, with sparing hand, as much as is enough.
If the crow had been satisfied to eat his prey in silence, he would have had more meat and less quarreling and envy.
Necessity takes impartially the highest and the lowest.
Oh! thou who are greatly mad, deign to spare me who am less mad.
The muse does not allow the praise-de-serving here to die: she enthrones him in the heavens.
He who studies to imitate the poet Pindar, O Julius, relies on artificial wings fastened on with wax, and is sure to give his name to a glassy sea.
Busy idleness urges us on.
Wherever the storm carries me, I go a willing guest.
Who then is sane? He who is not a fool.
He appears mad indeed but to a few, because the majority is infected with the same disease.
The musician who always plays on the same string is laughed at.
Marble statues, engraved with public inscriptions, by which the life and soul return after death to noble leaders.
What can be found equal to modesty, uncorrupt faith, the sister of justice, and undisguised truth?
The miser acquires, yet fears to use his gains.