Why, friends, you go to do you know not what: Wherein hath Caesar thus deserved your loves? Alas, you know not: I must tell you then: You have forgot the will I told you of. . . . . Here is the will, and under Caesar's seal. To every Roman citizen he gives, To every several man, seventy-five drachmas. . . . . Moreover, he hath left you all his walks, His private arbours and new-planted orchards, On this side Tiber; he hath left them you, And to your heirs for ever, common pleasures, To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves. Here was a Caesar! when comes such another?
The most unambiguous sign that a person holds men in low esteem is this, that he either acknowledges them merely as means to his ends or does not acknowledge them at all.
Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a man cannot have his flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but put him where you will, he stands.
Man has a tendency to try to give clear reasons to be rational, but often you can see how all those reasons are not convincing and turn out to be a big nonsense.
The primary paradox of Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality.
Nor need it cause surprise that things disagreeable to the good man should seem pleasant to some men; for mankind is liable to many corruptions and diseases, and the things in question are not really pleasant, but only pleasant to these particular persons, who are in a condition to think them so.