Let the weary at length possess quiet rest.
Self-denial is the best riches.
Know thyself; this is the great object.
Watch over yourself. Be your own accuser, then your judge; ask yourself grace sometimes, and, if there is need, impose upon yourself some pain.
I will have a care of being a slave to myself, for it is a perpetual, a shameful, and the heaviest of all servitudes; and this may be done by moderate desires.
When thou hast profited so much that thou respectest even thyself, thou mayst let go thy tutor.
Servitude seizes on few, but many seize on her.
Although a man has so well purged his mind that nothing can trouble or deceive him any more, yet he reached his present innocence through sin.
If we desire to judge justly, we must persuade ourselves that none of us is without sin.
All that lies betwixt the cradle and the grave is uncertain.
Vice is contagious, and there is no trusting the sound and the sick together.
We pardon familiar vices.
No man is born wise; but wisdom and virtue require a tutor; though we can easily learn to be vicious without a master.
Virtue hath no virtue if it be not impugned; then appeareth how great it is, of what value and power it is, when by patience it approveth what it works.
Virtue is shut out from no one; she is open to all, accepts all, invites all, gentlemen, freedmen, slaves, kings, and exiles; she selects neither house nor fortune; she is satisfied with a human being without adjuncts.
Virtue is that perfect good, which is the complement of a happy life; the only immortal thing that belongs to mortality.
Virtue with some is nothing but successful temerity.
Men practice war; beasts do not.
The fortune of war is always doubtful.
Golden roofs break men’s rest.