To win without risk is to triumph without glory.
It matters more how one gives than what one gives.
Here honor binds me, and I wish to satisfy it.
I don’t know how to defend myself: surprised innocence cannot imagine being under suspicion.
This dark brightness that falls from the stars.
Severity is allowable where gentleness has no effect.
In recounting our woes, we often soothe them.
I would not like a king who could obey.
To myself alone do I owe my fame.
Just as We never taste happiness in perfection, our most fortunate successes are mixed with sadness. So too we never taste sadness completely, as things could always be worse in some way and for this we can be grateful.
It is the crime not the scaffold which is the disgrace.
Ambition aspires to descend.
Your virtue raises your glory above your crime.
Flee an enemy who knows your weakness.
Liberty may be of no more use Than stirring up the flame of civil wars; Then, by disorder fatal to the world, One wants no king, the other wants no equal.
Omnipotence is bought with ceaseless fear.
What destroys one man preserves another.
He should be envied Who when his strength is spent lays down his life. Old age reserves a melancholy fate For noble souls before their life is done.
I see, I know, I believe, I am undeceived.
It is the gift of heaven and not of reason.