A learned man is not learned in all things; but a sufficient man is sufficient throughout, even to ignorance itself.
There is no more expensive thing than a free gift.
When I am attached by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.
Decency, not to dare to do that in public which it is decent enough to do in private.
Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses.
Amongst so many borrowed things, am glad if I can steal one, disguising and altering it for some new service.
No man profiteth but by the loss of others.
Order a purge for your brain, it will there be much better employed than upon your stomach.
The bees pillage the flowers here and there but they make honey of them which is all their own; it is no longer thyme or marjolaine: so the pieces borrowed from others he will transform and mix up into a work all his own.
A man should not so much respect what he eats, as with whom he eats.
I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.
I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.
There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.
A straight oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see things but how we see them.
The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.
Let us a little permit nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we.
Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.
It is setting a high value upon our opinions to roast men and women alive on account of them.
The soul that has no established aim loses itself.