To hear men talk of metonomies, metaphors, and allegories, and other grammar words, would not one think they signified some rare and exotic form of speaking? And yet they are phrases that come near to the babble of my chambermaid. And.
L’honneste est stable et permanent.
No passion disturbs the soundness of our judgement as anger does.
Most of our desires are born and nurtured at other people’s expense.
If the original essence of the thing which we fear could confidently lodge itself within us by its own authority it would be the same in all men. For all men are of the same species and, in varying degrees, are all furnished with the same conceptual tools and instruments of judgement.
In marriage, alliances and money rightly weigh at least as much as attractiveness and beauty.
I had rather my son should learn in a tan-house to speak, than in the schools to prate.
So much din from so many philosophical brainboxes! Trust in your philosophy now! Boast that you are the one who has found the lucky bean in your festive pudding!
Neither good nor ill is done to us by Fortune: she merely offers us the matter and the seeds: our soul, more powerful than she is, can mould it or sow them as she pleases, being the only cause and mistress of our happy state or our unhappiness.
I have a mind that belongs wholly to itself, and is accustomed to go its own way. Having never until this hour had a master or governor imposed on me, I have advanced as far as I pleased, and at my own pace. This has made me slack and unfit for the service of others; it has made me useless to any but myself.
Happy are they who can please and delight their senses with things insensate – and who can live off their death.
You should study more to understand that you know little.
It is fear that I am most afraid of.
Assaulted as I am by ambition, covetousness, rashness and superstition, and having such enemies to life as that within me, should I start wondering about the motions of the Universe?
The more simply we entrust ourself to Nature the more wisely we do so. Oh what a soft and delightful pillow, and what a sane one on which to rest a well-schooled head, are ignorance and unconcern.
If it lay in my power to make myself feared, I had rather make myself beloved.
With very little ado I stop the first sally of my emotions, and leave the subject that begins to be troublesome before it transports me. He who stops not the start will never be able to stop the course; he who cannot keep them out will never, get them out when they are once got in;.
Is it that we pretend to a reformation? Truly, no: but it may be we are more addicted to Venus than our fathers were. They are two exercises that thwart and hinder one another in their vigor. Lechery weakens our stomach on the one side; and on the other sobriety renders us more spruce and amorous for the exercise of love.
Happiness is a singular incentive to mediocrity.
If a man has no heart for either living or dying; if he has no will either to resist or to run away: what are we to do with him?