The principal use of prudence, of self-control, is that it teaches us to be masters of our passions, and to so control and guide them that the evils which they cause are quite bearable, and that we even derive joy from them all.
The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once.
And as it is the most generous souls who have most gratitude, it is those who have most pride, and who are most base and infirm, who most allow themselves to be carried away by anger and hatred.
Omnia apud me mathematica fiunt.
There is nothing so far removed from us to be beyond our reach, or so far hidden that we cannot discover it.
Thus each truth discovered was a rule available in the discovery of subsequent ones.
It’s the familiar love-hate syndrome of seduction: “I don’t really care what it is I say, I care only that you like it.”
In the matter of a difficult question it is more likely that the truth should have been discovered by the few than by the many.
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the self-same well from which your laughter rises was often-times filled with your tears.
Even if I were to suppose that I was dreaming and whatever I saw or imagined was false, yet I could not deny that ideas were truly in my mind.
The only thing that I know, is that I know nothing.
There is a great difference between mind and body insomuch as body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible.
For how do we know that the thoughts which occur in dreaming are false rather than those others which we experience when awake, since the former are often not less vivid and distinct than the latter?
The mind effortlessly and automatically takes in new ideas, which remain in limbo until verified or rejected by conscious, rational analysis.
I accept no principles of physics which are not also accepted in mathematics.
It is contrary to reasoning to say that there is a vacuum or space in which there is absolutely nothing.
But possibly I am something more than I suppose myself to be.
So far, I have been a spectator in this theater which is the world, but I am now about to mount the stage, and I come forward masked.
Sensations are nothing but confused modes of thinking.
The entire method consists in the order and arrangement of the things to which the mind’s eye must turn so that we can discover some truth.