If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.
I quote others only in order the better to express myself.
Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.
The greater part of the world’s troubles are due to questions of grammar.
Learned we may be with another man’s learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.
L’utilité du vivre n’est pas en l’espace: elle est en l’usage.
Heureuse la mort qui oste le loisir aux apprests de tel equipage.
D’autant que nous avons cher, estre, et estre consiste en mouvement et action.
J’accuse toute violence en l’education d’une ame tendre, qu’on dresse pour l’honneur, et la liberté.
Je hay entre autres vices, cruellement la cruauté, et par nature et par jugement, comme l’extreme de tous les vices.
Il n’est rien qui tente mes larmes que les larmes.
Les naturels sanguinaires à l’endroit des bestes, tesmoignent une propension naturelle à la cruauté.
Nature a, (ce crains-je) elle mesme attaché à l’homme quelque instinct à l’inhumanité
Why do people respect the package rather than the man?
Though the ancient poet in Plutarch tells us we must not trouble the gods with our affairs because they take no heed of our angers and disputes, we can never enough decry the disorderly sallies of our minds.
There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.
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.
I listen with attention to the judgment of all men;but so far as I can remember,I have followed none but my own.
Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.
Confidence in others’ honesty is no light testimony of one’s own integrity.
All is a-swarm with commentaries: of authors there is a dearth.
Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.
Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement.
We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there.
Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.
[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.
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 to have lived enough.
When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.
I enjoy books as misers enjoy treasures, because I know I can enjoy them whenever I please.
He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.
If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.
It is not reasonable that art should win the place of honor over our great and powerful mother Nature. We have so overloaded the beauty and richness of her works by our inventions that we have quite smothered her.
The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.
No passion disturbs the soundness of our judgement as anger does.
The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it.
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.
He lives happy and master of himself who can say as each day passes on, “I have lived.
Without doubt, it is a delightful harmony when doing and saying go together.
Meditation is a powerful and full study as can effectually taste and employ themselves.
If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God and a coward towards men.
Excellent memories are often coupled with feeble judgments.
Certainly, if he still has himself, a man of understanding has lost nothing.
I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.
All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them our own.
There is no passion so much transports thesincerity of judgement as doth anger
We are all lumps, and of so various and inform a contexture, that every piece plays, every moment, its own game, and there is as much difference betwixt us and ourselves as betwixt us and others.
Our zeal works wonders, whenever it supports our inclination toward hatred, cruelty, ambition.
To an atheist all writings tend to atheism: he corrupts the most innocent matter with his own venom.
A man is not hurt so much by what happens, as by his opinion of what happens.
On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.
We can be knowledgeable with another man’s knowledge, but we can’t be wise with another man’s wisdom.
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 the victory I obtain over him through his weakness.
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.
I…think it much more supportable to be always alone, than never to be so.
A man with nothing to lend should refrain from borrowing.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to live to yourself.
Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.
What a prodigious conscience must that be that can be at quiet within itself whilst it harbors under thesame roof, with so agreeing and so calm a society, both the crime and the judge?
My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.
This emperor was arbiter of the whole world at nineteen, and yet would have a man to be thirty before he could be fit to determine a dispute about a gutter.
If you don’t know how to die, don’t worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don’t bother your head about it.
If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.
From books all I seek is to give myself pleasure by an honourable pastime: or if I do study, I seek only that branch of learning which deals with knowing myself and which teaches me how to live and die well…
We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.
We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.
Between ourselves, there are two things that I have always observed to be in singular accord: supercelestial thoughts and subterranean conduct.
Speech belongs half to the speaker, half to the listener.
Writing does not cause misery, it is born of misery.
Tis no wonder, says one of the ancients, that chance has so great a dominion over us, since it is by chance we live.
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 habits.
The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to live with purpose.
A man must live in the world and make the best of it such as it is.
Greatness of soul consists not so much in soaring high and in pressing forward as in knowing how to adapt and limit oneself.
There is no passion so much transports the sincerity of judgement as doth anger.
He who fears he shall suffer already suffers what he fears.
The clearest sign of wisdom is continued cheerfulness.
The Ancient Mariner said to Neptune during a great storm ‘O God you will save me if you wish but I am going to go on holding my tiller straight.’
Valor is stability not of legs and arms but of courage and the soul.
Obstinacy and heat in sticking to one’s opinions is the surest proof of stupidity. Is there anything so cocksure so immovable so disdainful so contemplative so solemn and serious as an ass?
One should be ever booted and spurred and ready to depart.
We undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits their sickness and their health.
Riches like glory or health have no more beauty or pleasure than their possessor is pleased to lend them.
Riches like glory or health have no more beauty or pleasure than their possessor is pleased to lend them.
All the fame I look for in life is to have lived it quietly.
If you press me to say why I loved him I can say no more than it was because he was he and I was 1.
If you press me to say why I loved him I can say no more than because he was he and I was I.
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to know how to live to purpose.
The soul that has no established aim loses itself.
The great and glorious masterpiece of man is how to live with a purpose.
No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.
There is no man so good who were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.
He who does not live in some degree for others hardly lives for himself.
Once conform once do what others do because they do it and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.
Whatever is enforced by command is more imputed to him who exacts than to him who performs.
The highest wisdom is continual cheerfulness such a state like the region above the moon is always clear and serene.
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
No doctor takes pleasure in the health even of his friends.
It is commonly seen by experience that excellent memories do often accompany weak judgements.
No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living but that ten times in his life he might not lawfully be hanged.
Fear desire hope still push us on toward the future.
Fear desire hope still push us on toward the future.
Fear desire hope still push us on toward the future.
Fear desire hope still push us on toward the future.
Fear desire hope still push us on toward the future.
Fear desire hope still push us on toward the future.
Fear desire hope still push us on toward the future.
Fear desire hope still push us on toward the future.
Fear desire hope still push us on toward the future.
Desire and hope will push us on toward the future.
The value of life lies not in the length of days but in the use we make of them a man may live long yet live very little.
There never were two opinions alike in all the world no more than two hours or two grains: the most universal quality is diversity.
There is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is managed by order method and discipline.
Diogenes was asked what wine he liked best and he answered “Somebody else’s.”
He who fears he shall suffer already suffers what he fears.
There are few men who dare to publish to the world the prayers they make to Almighty God.
The Ancient Mariner said to Neptune during a great storm “O God you will save me if you wish but I am going to go on holding my tiller straight.”
There is no greater enemy to those who would please than expectation.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be one’s own self
I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.
I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself and not by borrowing.
Of all our infirmities the most savage is to despise our being.
The Ancient Mariner said to Neptune during a great storm “O God you will save me if you wish but I am going to go on holding my tiller straight.”
I speak the truth not so much as I would but as much as I dare and I dare a little more as I grow older.
When I religiously confess myself to myself I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice.
A wise man sees as much as he ought not as much as he can.
The word is half his that speaks and half his that hears it.
My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.
I quote others in order to better express my own self.
Difficulty is a coin which the learned conjure with so as not to reveal the vanity of their studies and which human stupidity is keen to accept in payment
Those who have compared our life to a dream were right… we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.
There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.
No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.
For truly it is to be noted, that children’s plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.
Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.
Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil’s alphabet – the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.
Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.
It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness. A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength.
Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.
It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.
Stubborn and ardent clinging to one’s opinion is the best proof of stupidity.
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one’s own goodness.
Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.
There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.
We can be knowledgable with other men’s knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men’s wisdom.
There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.
No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.
I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older.
I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.
Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.
The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.
How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.
Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.
Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.
I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.
The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them… Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.
The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre.
Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.
Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one’s own inner self.