"The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation."

"There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to."

"No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living but that ten times in his life he might not lawfully be hanged."

"Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them."

"The highest wisdom is continual cheerfulness such a state like the region above the moon is always clear and serene."

"I know not what quintessence of all this mixture, which, seizing my whole will, carried it to plunge and lose itself in his, and that having seized his whole will, brought it back with equal concurrence and appetite to plunge and lose itself in mine."

"Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil's alphabet - the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies."

"I walk firmer and more secure up hill than down."

"The beauty of stature is the only beauty of men."

"Greatness of soul consists not so much in soaring high and in pressing forward as in knowing how to adapt and limit oneself."

"Can anything be imagined so ridiculous, that this miserable and wretched creature [man], who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole?"

"This emperor was arbiter of the whole world at nineteen, and yet would have a man to be thirty before he could be fit to determine a dispute about a gutter."

"Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head."

"I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing."

"The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself."

"Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself."

"The least strained and most natural ways of the soul are the most beautiful, the best occupations are the least forced."

"Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages."

"Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do."

"The word is half his that speaks and half his that hears it."

"I quote others only in order the better to express myself."

"We are all of us richer than we think we are."

"There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees."

"Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity."

"Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible."

"It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor."

"Les naturels sanguinaires à l'endroit des bêtes, témoignent une propension naturelle à la cruauté."

"Cowardice is the mother of cruelty."

"No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port."

"Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own."

"If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I."

"Without doubt, it is a delightful harmony when doing and saying go together."

"There are few men who dare to publish to the world the prayers they make to Almighty God."

"If a man urge me to tell wherefore I loved him, I feel it cannot be expressed but by answering: Because it was he, because it was myself."

"Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee."

"The Ancient Mariner said to Neptune during a great storm 'O God you will save me if you wish but I am going to go on holding my tiller straight.'"

"I have heard Silvius, an excellent physician of Paris, say that lest the digestive faculties of the stomach should grow idle, it were not amiss once a month to rouse them by this excess, and to spur them lest they should grow dull and rusty; and one author tells us that the Persians used to consult about their mostimportant affairs after being well warmed with wine."

"I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly."

"There are some defeats more triumphant than victories."

"A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can."

"I have often seen people uncivil by too much civility, and tiresome in their courtesy."

"Whatever is enforced by command is more imputed to him who exacts than to him who performs."

"Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement."

"He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak."

"The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom."

"Retire within yourselves, but first prepare yourselves to receive yourselves there. It would be madness to trust yourselves to yourselves if you do not know how to control yourselves. There are ways of failing in solitude as well as in company."

"I do not believe, from what I have been told about this people, that there is anything barbarous or savage about them, except that we all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits."

"The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it."

"The beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things."

"There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom."