The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness.
Riches like glory or health have no more beauty or pleasure than their possessor is pleased to lend them.
We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.
And in this we must for the most part entertain ourselves with ourselves, and so privately that no exotic knowledge or communication be admitted there; there to laugh and to talk, as if without wife,...
I enjoy books as misers enjoy treasures, because I know I can enjoy them whenever I please.
Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and th...
The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.
The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.
Why do people respect the package rather than the man?
Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.
There are few men who dare to publish to the world the prayers they make to Almighty God.
There is no desire more natural than the desire of knowledge. (Il n'est desir plus naturel que le desir de connaissance)
In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk - they are all part of the curriculum.
There is more ado to interpret interpretations than to interpret things, and more books upon books than upon any other subject; we do nothing but comment upon one another. Every place swarms with comm...
The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you t...
No one should be subjected to force over things which belonged to him.
Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.
It is a disaster that wisdom forbids you to be satisfied with yourself and always sends you away dissatisfied and fearful, whereas stubbornness and foolhardiness fill their hosts with joy and assuranc...
Democritus and Heraclitus were two philosophers, of whom the first, finding the condition of man vain and ridiculous, never went out in public but with a mocking and laughing face; whereas Heraclitus,...
Certainly, if he still has himself, a man of understanding has lost nothing.