Scurrility has no object in view but incivility; if it is uttered from feelings of petulance, it is mere abuse; if it is spoken in a joking manner, it may be considered raillery.
Wars, therefore, are to be undertaken for this end, that we may live in peace, without being injured; but when we obtain the victory, we must preserve those enemies who behaved without cruelty or inhumanity during the war.
There are some duties we owe even to those who have wronged us. There is, after all, a limit to retribution and punishment.
Law stands mute in the midst of arms.
We do not destroy religion by destroying superstition.
Our thoughts are free.
The evil implanted in man by nature spreads so imperceptibly, when the habit of wrong-doing is unchecked, that he himself can set no limit to his shamelessness.
What we call pleasure, and rightly so is the absence of all pain.
I like myself, but I won’t say I’m as handsome as the bull that kidnapped Europa.
For what people have always sought is equality before the law. For rights that were not open to all alike would be no rights.
Yield, ye arms, to the toga; to civic praise, ye laurels.
A war is never undertaken by the ideal State, except in defense of its honor or its safety.
There is nothing more shocking than to see assertion and approval dashing ahead of cognition and perception.
It is not the place that maketh the person, but the person that maketh the place honorable.
We all are imbued with the love of praise.
To wonder at nothing when it happens, to consider nothing impossible before it has come to pass.
Man’s life is ruled by fortune, not by wisdom.
Democritus maintains that there can be no great poet without a spite of madness.
The well-known old remark of Cato, who used to wonder how two soothsayers could look one another in the face without laughing.
For a courageous man cannot die dishonorably, a man who has attained the consulship cannot die before his time, a philosopher cannot die wretchedly.