VITTORIO ALFIERI

First thoughts are not always the best.

Where there are laws, he who has not broken them need not tremble.

Deep vengeance is the daughter of deep silence.

A usurper always distrusts the whole world.

Heaven takes care that no man secures happiness by crime.

Often the test of courage is not to die but to live.

To err is human; but contrition felt for the crime distinguishes the virtuous from the wicked.

Liars are always most disposed to swear.

Ofttimes the test of courage becomes rather to live than to die.

Disgrace does not consist in the punishment, but in the crime.

For you, O Italy, hatred of the French, under whatever standard or mask they present themselves, must be the single and fundamental basis of your political existence.

The time for hope is gone, and come for fear.

Thou knowest not the endless artifices of a court. Invented crimes are often there alleged; but real ones, and those especially, which may offend his pride, are oftentimes not to a king divulged.

Necessity inspires the fatal thought.

I had seen the great, but I had not seen the small.

A conquering king will banish from his breast hatred towards one whom he no longer fears.

For 'tis impossible Hate to return with love.

If ardent passions push not men on to lofty enterprise, calm wisdom never will accomplish it.

There is a silence, the child of love, which expresses everything, and proclaims more loudly than the tongue is able to do; there are movements that are involuntary proofs of what the soul feels.

Joy surfeited turns to sorrow.

The guilty is he who meditates a crime; the punishment is his who lays the plot.

Sometimes blood, for the sake of sparing it, is spilled.

Alas, 'tis force alone that can compel to virtuous actions a degenerate people.

That blood which thou hast spill'd, should join you closely in an eternal bond.

Joy, when it is excessive, overcomes as much as grief.