My appetite comes to me while eating.
It would be better to have no laws at all, than to have too many.
There is nothing on which men are commonly more intent than on making a way for their opinions.
He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.
Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from nature itself.
Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.
I walk firmer and more secure uphill than down.
Sometimes it is a good choice not to choose at all.
Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.
Princes give me sufficiently if they take nothing from me, and do me much good if they do me no hurt; it is all I require of them.
If you have known how to compose your life, you have done a great deal more than the person who knows how to compose a book. You have done more than the one who has taken cities and empires.
Of all the benefits which virtue confers on us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest.
There are few men who dare to publish to the world the prayers they make to Almighty God.
Habit is second nature.
I do not understand; I pause; I examine.
A little of everything and nothing thoroughly, after the French fashion.
I would rather be old for a shorter time than be old before my time.
Just as in habiliments it is a sign of weakness to wish to make oneself noticeable by some peculiar and unaccustomed fashion, so, in language, the quest for new-fangled phrases and little-known words comes from a puerile and pedantic ambition.
If virtue cannot shine bright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say that she cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is from her that she derives her reputation and honor?
Laws are often made by fools, and even more often by men who fail in equity because they hate equality: but always by men, vain authorities who can resolve nothing.