Truth for us nowadays is not what is, but what others can be brought to accept: just as we call money not only legal tender but any counterfeit coins in circulation.
A man of genius belongs to no period and no country. He speaks the language of nature, which is always everywhere the same.
He lives happy and master of himself who can say as each day passes on, “I have lived.
Whether we are running our home or studying or hunting or following any other sport, we should go to the very boundaries of pleasure but take good care not to be involved beyond the point where it begins to be mingled with pain.
Without doubt, it is a delightful harmony when doing and saying go together.
The time is now proper for us to reform backward; more by dissenting than by agreeing; by differing more than by consent.
Friendship on the contrary is enjoyed in proportion to our desire: since it is a matter of the mind, with our souls being purified by practising it.
The usefulness of living lies not in duration but in what you make of it. Some have lived long and lived little. See to it while you are still here. Whether you have lived enough depends not on a count of years but on your will.
The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but in walking orderly; its grandeur does not exercise itself in grandeur, but in mediocrity.
Difficulty is a coin which the learned conjure with so as not to reveal the vanity of their studies and which human stupidity is keen to accept in payment.
Those who shake the State are easily the first to be engulfed in its destruction. The fruits of dissension are not gathered by the one who began it: he stirs and troubles the waters for other men to fish in.
The contradictions of judgments, then, neither offend nor alter, they only rouse and exercise me. We evade correction, whereas we ought to offer and present ourselves to it, especially when it appears in the form of conference, and not of authority.
A man with nothing to lend should refrain from borrowing.
When I am playing with my cat, who knows whether she have more sport in dallying with me than I have in gaming with her?
We take our fetters with us; our freedom is not total: we still turn our gaze towards the things we have left behind; our imagination is full of them.
There is hardly less torment in running a family than in running a country.
Man is indeed an object miraculously vain, various and wavering. It is difficult to found a judgement on him which is steady and uniform.
I seek only the learning that treats of the knowledge of myself and instructs me how to die well and live well.
I... think it much more supportable to be always alone, than never to be so.
If I can, I will prevent my death from saying anything not first said by my life.