The man who seeks to educate himself must first read and then travel in order to correct what he has learned.

lies, truth, loveI have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of introducing it into the minds which were ignorant of it’s charms.

Desires are but pain and torment, and enjoyment is sweet because it delivers us from them.

The philosopher is a person who refuses no pleasures which do not produce greater sorrows, and who knows how to create new ones.

To lead a blameless life you must curb your passions , and whatever misfortune may befall you cannot be ascribed by anyone to want of good luck, or attributed to fate; these words are devoid...

There is no such thing as a perfectly happy or perfectly unhappy man in the world. One has more happiness in his life and another more unhappiness, and the same circumstance may produce widely different...

There is no such thing as destiny. We ourselves shape our lives.

Hope is nothing but a deceitful flatterer accepted by reason only because it is often in need of palliatives.

They [his readers, whom he asks to be his friends] will find that I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of first introducing it into...

If you have not done things worthy of being written about, at least write things worthy of being read.

one who makes no mistakes makes nothing

As for myself, I always willingly acknowledge my own self as the principal cause of every good and of every evil which may befall me; therefore, I have always found myself capable of being my...

The sweetest pleasures are those which are hardest to be won.

We ourselve are the authors of almost all our woes and griefs, of which we so unreasonably complain.

Be the flame, not the moth.

Enjoy the present, bid defiance to the future, laugh at all those reasonable beings who exercise their reason to avoid the misfortunes which they fear, destroying at the same time the pleasure that they might...

From that moment our love became sad, and sadness is a disease which gives the death-blow to affection.