Cicero: “But what a poor dotard must he be who has not learnt in the course of so long a life that death is not a thing to be…”

In the matter of a promise one must always consider the meaning and not the mere words.

The first office of justice is to keep one man from doing harm to another, unless provoked by wrong; and the next is to lead men to use common possessions for the common interests, private property for their own.

For they secure one sort of justice, to be sure, in that they do no positive wrong to anyone, but they fall into the opposite injustice; for hampered by their pursuit of learning they leave to their fate those whom they ought to defend.

Thus apparent expediency is outweighed when placed in the balance against moral rectitude.