The true test of a perfect man is the power of bearing with spirit and dignity violent changes of fortune.

That to all things, then, which exist there is ordained decay and change I think requires no further arguments to show: for the inexorable course of nature is sufficient to convince us of it.

For just as rust is the natural dissolvent of iron, wood-worms and grubs to timber, by which they are destroyed without any external injury, but by that which is engendered in themselves; so in each constitution there is naturally engendered a particular vice inseperable from it: in kingship it is absolutism: in aristocracy it is oligarchy; in democracy lawless ferocity and violence; and to these vicious states all these forms of goverment are, as I have shown, inevitably transformed.

A notion of the meaning and theory of duty, is in fact the beginning and the end of justice.