The best interpreter of the law is custom.
In honorable dealing you should consider what you intended, not what you said or thought.
It shows nobility to be willing to increase your debt to a man to whom you already owe much.
Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offense.
Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system.
The study and knowledge of the universe would somehow be lame and defective were no practical results to follow.
Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.
Death is not natural for a state as it is for a human being, for whom death is not only necessary, but frequently even desirable.
Great is the power of habit. It teaches us to bear fatigue and to despise wounds and pain.
Time destroys the speculation of men, but it confirms nature.
The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.
The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.
The greatest pleasures are only narrowly separated from disgust.
Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.
For a tear is quickly dried, especially when shed for the misfortunes of others.
So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.
Empire and liberty.
What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation?
He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.
The long time to come when I shall not exist has more effect on me than this short present time, which nevertheless seems endless.