Orators are most vehement when they have the weakest cause, as men get on horseback when they cannot walk.
He who acknowledges a kindness has it still, and he who has a grateful sense of it has requited it.
Inability to tell good from evil is the greatest worry of man’s life.
The celestial order and the beauty of the universe compel me to admit that there is some excellent and eternal Being, who deserves the respect and homage of men.
As I give thought to the matter, I find four causes for the apparent misery of old age; first it withdraws us from active accomplishments; second, it renders the body less powerful; third, it deprives us of almost all forms of enjoyment; fourth, it.
Nothing contributes to the entertainment of the reader more, than the change of times and the vicissitudes of fortune.
When a government becomes powerful it is destructive, extravagant and violent; it is an usurer which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honorable men of their substance, for votes with which to perpetuate itself.
Nothing so cements and holds together all the parts of a society as faith or credit, which can never be kept up unless men are under some force or necessity of honestly paying what they owe to one another.
My precept to all who build, is, that the owner should be an ornament to the house, and not the house to the owner.
It is not a virtue, but a deceptive copy and imitation of virtue, when we are led to the performance of duty by pleasure as its recompense.
Crimes are not to be measured by the issue of events, but by the bad intentions of men.
Leisure with dignity.
The aim of justice is to give everyone his due.
For just as some women are said to be handsome though without adornment, so this subtle manner of speech, though lacking in artificial graces, delights us.
If the truth were self-evident, eloquence would be unnecessary.
Let flattery, the handmaid of the vices, be far removed .
Advice is judged by results, not by intentions.
A community is like the ones who govern it.
The first law for the historian is that he shall never dare utter an untruth. The second is that he shall suppress nothing that is true. Moreover, there shall be no suspicion of partiality in his writing, or of malice.
Nor do I regret that I have lived, since I have so lived that I think I was not born in vain, and I quit life as if it were an inn, not a home.