The whole title by which you possess your property, is not a title of nature but of a human institution.
You corrupt religion either in favour of your friends, or against your enemies.
Vanity is but the surface.
This is what I see, and what troubles me. I look on all sides, and everywhere I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offers me nothing that is not a matter of doubt and disquiet.
When some passion or effect is described in a natural style, we find within ourselves the truth of what we hear, without knowing it was there.
What a difficult thing it is to ask someone’s advice on a matter without coloring his judgment by the way in which we present our problem.
Jurisdiction is not given for the sake of the judge, but for that of the litigant.
When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing.
We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves.
Custom creates the whole of equity, for the simple reason that it is accepted.
We never love a person, but only qualities.
Little things console us because little things afflict us.
If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?
Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.
Two things control men’s nature, instinct and experience.
That we must love one God only is a thing so evident that it does not require miracles to prove it.
Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.
If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.
Custom determines what is agreeable.