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

The malicious humor of men, though perverse and refractory, is not so savage and invincible but it may be wrought upon by kindness, and altered by repeated obligations.

[The Spartans] ordered the maidens to exercise themselves with wrestling, running, throwing the quoit, and casting the dart, to the end that the fruit they conceived might, in strong and healthy bodies, take firmer root and find better growth, and withal that they, with this greater vigour, might be the more able to undergo the pains of childbearing.

I don't need a friend who change when I change, who nod when I nod. This is something than my own shadow can do.