The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.

Speech belongs half to the speaker, half to the listener.

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.

Certainly, if he still has himself, a man of understanding has lost nothing.

We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

I find I am much prouder of the victory I obtain over myself, when, in the very ardor of dispute, I make myself submit to my adversary’s force of reason, than I am pleased with...

There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.

The greater part of the world’s troubles are due to questions of grammar.

Combien de choses nous servoyent hier d’articles de foy, qui nous sont fables aujourd’huy?How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables for us?

Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement.

There is no passion so much transports thesincerity of judgement as doth anger

Between ourselves, there are two things that I have always observed to be in singular accord: supercelestial thoughts and subterranean conduct.

[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

Pride and curiosity are the two scourges of our souls. The latter prompts us to poke our noses into everything, and the former forbids us to leave anything unresolved and undecided.

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 assurance.

Can anything be imagined so ridiculous, that this miserable and wretched creature [man], who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and...

We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.

We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there.

No passion disturbs the soundness of our judgement as anger does.

En cierta ocasión Demócrito comió en su mesa unos higos que sabían a miel y empezó de inmediato a indagar en su espíritu de dónde provenía tal dulzura inusitada. A fin de esclarecerlo, iba a...

We should tend our freedom wisely.

El amor no es más que el deseo furioso de algo que huye de nosotros…

I listen with attention to the judgment of all men;but so far as I can remember,I have followed none but my own.

Excellent memories are often coupled with feeble judgments.

I do not believe, from what I have been told about this people, that there is anything barbarous or savage about them, except that we all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own...

Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.

Confidence in others’ honesty is no light testimony of one’s own integrity.

Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.

We take our fetters with us; our freedom is not total: we still turn our gaze towards the things we have left behind; our imagination is full of them.

The least strained and most natural ways of the soul are the most beautiful; the best occupations are the least forced.

Valor is strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul; it consists not in the worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own.

I never rebel so much against France as not to regard Paris with a friendly eye; she has had my heart since my childhood…. I love her tenderly, even to her warts and her spots....