Cicero: “Yet when the stress of circumstances demands it, we must gird on the sword and prefer death to slavery and disgrace.”

For we may well be guided by those fundamental principles of justice which I laid down at the outset: first, that no harm be done to anyone; second, that the common interests be conserved.

He was wrong; for deceit does not remove the guilt of perjury--it merely aggravates it. #The ancient Roman discipline.# His cunning that impudently tried to masquerade as prudence was, therefore, only folly.

But the trouble about this matter is that it is in the greatest souls and in the most brilliant geniuses that we usually find ambitions for civil and military authority, for power, and for glory, springing up; and therefore we must be the…

It is, therefore, only a madman who, in a calm, would pray for a storm; a wise man's way is, when the storm does come, to withstand it with all the means at his command, and especially, when the advantages to be expected in case of a…