Women are not altogether in the wrong when they refuse the rules of life prescribed to the World, for men only have established them and without their consent.
Lawyers and physicians are an ill provision for any country.
I determine nothing; I do not comprehend things; I suspend judgment; I examine.
I would have every man write what he knows and no more.
It’s not victory if it doesn’t end the war.
I have seen people rude by being over-polite.
Hath God obliged himself not to exceed the bounds of our knowledge?
A speech belongs half to the speaker and half to the listener.
Travelling through the world produces a marvellous clarity in the judgment of men. We are all of us confined and enclosed within ourselves, and see no farther than the end of our nose.
What kind of truth is this which is true on one side of a mountain and false on the other?
As soon as women become ours we are no longer theirs.
The only good histories are those written by those who had command in the events they describe.
To how many blockheads of my time has a cold and taciturn demeanor procured the credit of prudence and capacity!
Is there anything so grave and serious as an ass?
Who is it that does not voluntarily exchange his health, his repose, and his very life for reputation and glory? The most useless, frivolous, and false coin that passes current among us.
He that first likened glory to a shadow did better than he was aware of. They are both of them things excellently vain. Glory also, like a shadow, goes sometimes before the body, and sometimes in length infinitely exceeds it.
Gentleness and repose are paramount to everything else in woman.
There is nothing which so poisons princes as flattery, nor anything whereby wicked men more easily obtain credit and favor with them.
For there is no air that men so greedily draw in, that diffuses itself so soon, and that penetrates so deep as that of license.
The good opinion of the vulgar is injurious.