Why dost thou complain of this world? It detains thee not; thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in pain.
May God defend me from myself.
We should rather examine, who is better learned, than who is more learned.
I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.
It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.
A man must always study, but he must not always go to school: what a contemptible thing is an old abecedarian!
Difficulty is a coin the learned make use of like jugglers, to conceal the inanity of their art.
I see several animals that live so entire and perfect a life, some without sight, others without hearing: who knows whether to us also one, two, or three, or many other senses, may not be wanting?
Thus we should beware of clinging to vulgar opinions, and judge things by reason’s way, not by popular say.
Satiety comes of too frequent repetition and he who will not give himself leisure to be thirsty can never find the true pleasure of drinking.
Whether the events in our life are good or bad, greatly depends on the way we perceive them.
Diogenes was asked what wine he liked best; and he answered as I would have done when he said, “Somebody else’s”.
Tortures are a dangerous invention, and seem to be a test of endurance rather than of truth.
To philosophize is to doubt.
Is it not better to remain in suspense than to entangle yourself in the many errors that the human fancy has produced? Is it not better to suspend your convictions than to get mixed up in these seditious and quarrelsome divisions?
A man should keep for himself a little back shop, all his own, quite unadulterated, in which he establishes his true freedom and chief place of seclusion and solitude.
Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgment on him.
Our own peculiar human condition is that we are as fit to be laughed at as able to laugh.
The most beautiful lives, to my mind, are those that conform to the common human pattern, with order, but without miracle and without eccentricity.
There is nothing so noble and so right as to play our human life well and fitly, nor anything so difficult to learn as how to livethis life well and according to Nature.