“One's virtue is all that one truly has, because it is not imperiled by the vicissitudes of fortune.”

“One has never said better how much "humanism", "normality", "quality of life" were nothing but the vicissitudes of profitability.”

“If we are truly fortunate, we will be blessed with one to love us, truly love us. To accept us in all ways, to see us in all our weaknesses and in our glory and to take our hearts, as we take theirs.”

“And so they grow richer and richer, and the more they think of making a fortune the less they think of virtue; for when riches and virtue are placed together in the scales of the balance, the one always rises as the other falls.”

“Courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other.”

“Many a person has held close, throughout their entire lives, two friends that always remained strange to one another, because one of them attracted by virtue of similarity, the other by difference.”