“It is certainly desirable to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors.”

“[It was] better to set up a monarchy themselves than to suffer a sedition to continue that must certainly end in one.”

“In a certain faraway land the cold is so intense that words freeze as soon as they are uttered, and after some time then thaw and become audible so that words spoken in winter go unheard until the next summer.”

“The whole of life is but a moment of time. It is our duty, therefore to use it, not to misuse it.”

“To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood all our days”

“It does not follow, that because a particular work of art succeeds in charming us, its creator also deserves our admiration.”

“But virtue, by the bare statement of its actions, can so affect men's minds as to create at once both admiration of the things done and desire to imitate the doers of them. The goods of fortune we would possess and would enjoy; those of virtue we long to practise and exercise. We are content to receive the former from others, the latter we wish others to experience from us. Moral good is a practical stimulus; it is no sooner seen, than it inspires an impulse to practice, and influences the mind and character not by a mere imitation which we look at, but by the statement of the fact creates a moral purpose which we form.”