Greatness stands upon a precipice, and if prosperity carries a man never so little beyond his poise, it overbears and dashes him to pieces.
When once ambition has passed its natural limits, its progress is boundless.
Beauty is such a fleeting blossom, how can wisdom rely upon its momentary delight?
No book can be so good, as to be profitable when negligently read.
That comes too late that comes for the asking.
To give and to lose is nothing; but to lose and to give still is the part of a great mind.
I know that nothing comes to pass but what God appoints; our fate is decreed, and things do not happen by chance, but every man’s portion of joy and sorrow is predetermined.
Death is a release from and an end of all pains.
Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all. It sets the slave at liberty, carries the banished man home, and places all mortals on the same level, insomuch that life itself were a punishment without it.
The most happy ought to wish for death.
To make another person hold his tongue, be you first silent.
The way to wickedness is always through wickedness.
As fate is inexorable, and not to be moved either with tears or reproaches, an excess of sorrow is as foolish as profuse laughter; while, on the other hand, not to mourn at all is insensibility.
Fortune dreads the brave, and is only terrible to the coward.
The miserable are sacred.
We pray for trifles without so much as a thought of the greatest blessings; and we are not ashamed many times, to ask God for that which we should blush to own to our neighbor.
It is remarkable that Providence has given us all things for our advantage near at hand; but iron, gold, and silver, being both the instruments of blood and slaughter and the price of it, nature has hidden in the bowels of the earth.
Corporeal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
He is greedy of life who is not willing to die when the world is perishing around him.
Misfortunes, in fine, cannot be avoided; but they may be sweetened, if not overcome, and our lives made happy by philosophy.