Death is sometimes a punishment, often a gift; to many it has been a favor.
Life is short and art is long.
That which takes effect by chance is not an art.
Who needs forgiveness, should the same extend with readiness.
An age builds up cities: an hour destroys them.
Let no man give advice to others that he has not first given himself.
It's the great soul that surrenders itself to fate, but a puny degenerate thing that struggles.
A troubled countenance oft discloses much.
Life without the courage for death is slavery.
Genius has never been accepted without a measure of condonement.
Fine conduct is always spontaneous.
Men practice war; beasts do not.
Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.
Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got.
The profit on a good action is to have done it.
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.
There is nothing that Nature has made necessary which is more easy than death; we are longer a-coming into the world than going out of it; and there is not any minute of our lives wherein we may not reasonably expect it. Nay, it is but a momen'ts work, the parting of soul and body. What a shame is it then to stand in fear of anything so long that is over so soon!
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.
It is opportunity that makes the thief.
One must steer, not talk.
The articulate, trained voice is more distracting than mere noise.
You talk one way, you live another.
Know thyself; this is the great object.
Solitude and company may be allowed to take their turns: the one creates in us the love of mankind, the other that of ourselves; solitude relieves us when we are sick of company, and conversation when we are weary of being alone, so that the one cures the other. There is no man so miserable as he that is at a loss how to use his time
Only a great man, believe me, and one whose excellence rises far above human failings, will not allow anything to be stolen from his own span of time, and his life is very long precisely because he has devoted to himself entirely any time that became available. None of it lay uncultivated and idle, none was under another man's control, for guarding it most jealously, he found nothing worth exchanging for his own precious time.
