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 vulgar and common esteem is seldom happy in hitting right; and I am much mistaken if, amongst the writings of my time, the worst are not those which have most gained the popular applause.
The good opinion of the vulgar is injurious.
Pleasure itself is painful at the bottom.
Most pleasures embrace us but to strangle.
It is indeed the boundary of life, beyond which we are not to pass; which the law of nature has pitched for a limit not to be exceeded.
Even in the midst of compassion we feel within I know not what tart sweet titillation of malicious pleasure in seeing others suffer; children have the same feeling.
For me, who only desire to become wise, not more learned or eloquent, these logical or Aristotelian dispositions of parts are of no use.
There is not one of us that would not be worse than kings, if so continually corrupted as they are with a sort of vermin called flatterers.