All the glory that I pretend to derive from my life is that I have lived
it in quiet; in quiet, not according to Metrodorus, or Arcesilaus, or
Aristippus, but according to myself. For seeing philosophy has not been
able to find out any way to tranquillity that is good in common, let
every one seek it in particular.

To what do Caesar and Alexander owe the infinite grandeur of their renown
but to fortune? How many men has she extinguished in the beginning of
their progress, of whom we have no knowledge, who brought as much courage
to the work as they, if their adverse hap had not cut them off in the
first sally of their arms? Amongst so many and so great dangers I do not
remember I have anywhere read that Caesar was ever wounded; a thousand
have fallen in less dangers than the least of those he went through. An
infinite number of brave actions must be performed without witness and
lost, before one turns to account. A man is not always on the top of a
breach, or at the head of an army, in the sight of his general, as upon a
scaffold; a man is often surprised betwixt the hedge and the ditch; he
must run the hazard of his life against a henroost; he must dislodge four
rascally musketeers out of a barn; he must prick out single from his
party, and alone make some attempts, according as necessity will have it.
And whoever will observe will, I believe, find it experimentally true,
that occasions of the least lustre are ever the most dangerous; and that
in the wars of our own times there have more brave men been lost in
occasions of little moment, and in the dispute about some little paltry
fort, than in places of greatest importance, and where their valour might
have been more honourably employed.

Who thinks his death achieved to ill purpose if he do not fall on some
signal occasion, instead of illustrating his death, wilfully obscures his