It is the contest that delights us, and not the victory.
The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.
Any unity which doesn’t have its origin in the multitudes is tyranny.
The only thing which consoles for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves and which makes us imperceptibly ruin ourselves.
It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false.
The captain of a ship is not chosen from those of the passengers who comes from the best family.
Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; for in disobeying the one we are unfortunate, and in disobeying the other we are fools.
Justice is what is established; and thus all our established laws will necessarily be regarded as just without examination, since they are established.
Continuous eloquence wearies. Grandeur must be abandoned to be appreciated. Continuity in everything is unpleasant. Cold is agreeable, that we may get warm.
The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.
There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.
Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.
The majority is the best way, because it is visible, and has strength to make itself obeyed. Yet it is the opinion of the least able.
I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.
Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.
The multitude which is not brought to act as a unity, is confusion. That unity which has not its origin in the multitude is tyranny.
What amazes me the most is to see that everyone is not amazed at his own weakness.
Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference...
The manner in which Epictetus, Montaigne, and Salomon de Tultie wrote, is the most usual, the most suggestive, the most remembered, and the oftener quoted; because it is entirely composed of thoughts born from the common talk of life.
Those honor nature well, who teach that she can speak on everything.