The fashions of human affairs are brief and changeable, and fortune never remains long indulgent.
[Lat., Breves et mutabiles vices rerum sunt, et fortuna nunquam simpliciter indulget.]
What can be happier than for a man, conscious of virtuous acts, and content with liberty, to despise all human affairs?
[Lat., Quid enim est melius quam memoria recte factorum, et libertate contentum negligere humana?]
But assuredly Fortune rules in all things; she raised to eminence or buries in oblivion everything from caprice rather than from well-regulated principle.
[Lat., Sed profecto Fortuna in omni re dominatur; ea res cunctas ex lubidine magis, quam ex vero, celebrat, obscuratque.]
The most wretched fortune is safe; for there is no fear of anything worse.
[Lat., Fortuna miserrima tuta est:
Nam timor eventus deterioris abest.]
Though you strut proud of your money, yet fortune has not changed your birth.
[Lat., Licet superbus ambules pecuniae,
Fortuna non mutat genus.]
Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.
[Lat., Esse oportet ut vivas, non vivere ut edas.]
Audaces fortuna iuvat (latin)- Fortune favors the bold.
Keep what you have got; the known evil is best.
[Lat., Habeas ut nactus; nota mala res optima est.]
What, if as said, man is a bubble.
[Lat., Quod, ut dictur, si est homo bulla, eo magis senex.]
Fortune does us neither good nor hurt; she only presents us the matter, and the seed, which our soul, more powerfully than she, turns and applies as she best pleases; being the sole cause and sovereign mistress of her own happy or unhappy condition.
Our prayers should be for a sound mind in a healthy body.
[Lat., Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.]
Be, as many now are, luxurious to yourself, parsimonious to your friends.
[Lat., Esto, ut nunc multi, dives tibi pauper amicis.]
But grant the wrath of Heaven be great, 'tis slow.
[Lat., Ut sit magna tamen certe lenta ira deorum est.]
How bitter it is to reap a harvest of evil for good that you have done!
[Lat., Ut acerbum est, pro benefactis quom mali messem metas!]
Whenever fortune wishes to joke, she lifts people from what is humble to the highest extremity of affairs.
Yet the age was not so utterly destitute of virtues but that it produced some good examples.
[Lat., Non tamen adeo virtutum sterile seculum, ut non et bona exempla prodiderit.]