Wine is the benevolent god, who gives back gaiety to men and restores youth to the old.
Man is the sole animal whose nudities offend his own companions, and the only one who, in his natural actions, withdraws and hides himself from his own kind.
Intelligence is required to be able to know that a man knows not.
The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts, and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible.
Meditation is a powerful and full study as can effectually taste and employ themselves.
Nor is it enough to toughen up his soul; you must also toughen up his muscles.
For among other things he had been counseled to bring me to love knowledge and duty by my own choice, without forcing my will, and to educate my soul entirely through gentleness and freedom.
If falsehood, like truth, had but one face, we would be more on equal terms. For we would consider the contrary of what the liar said to be certain. But the opposite of truth has a hundred thousand faces and an infinite field.
Only he can judge of matters great and high whose soul is likewise.
Learning must not only lodge with us: we must marry her.
We judge a horse not only by its pace on a racecourse, but also by its walk, nay, when resting in its stable.
It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one.
It takes so much to be a king that he exists only as such. That extraneous glare that surrounds him hides him and conceals him from us; our sight breaks and is dissipated by it being filled and arrested by this strong light.
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.