"I never rebel so much against France as not to regard Paris with a friendly eye; she has had my heart since my childhood.... I love her tenderly, even to her warts and her spots. I am French only by this great city: the glory of France, and one of the noblest ornaments of the world."

"Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie."

"It is a disaster that wisdom forbids you to be satisfied with yourself and always sends you away dissatisfied and fearful, whereas stubbornness and foolhardiness fill their hosts with joy and assurance."

"Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self."

"Il n'est rien qui tente mes larmes que les larmes."

"It is an absolute and virtually divine perfection to know how to enjoy our being rightfully."

"If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways."

"Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know."

"Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being."

"There never were two opinions alike in all the world no more than two hours or two grains: the most universal quality is diversity."

"The natural heat, say the good-fellows,first seats itself in the feet: that concerns infancy; thence it mounts into the middleregion, where it makes a long abode and produces, in my opinion, the sole true pleasures of human life; all other pleasures in comparison sleep; towards the end, like a vapor that still mounts upward, it arrives at the throat, where it makes its final residence, and concludes the progress."

"We can be knowledgeable with another man's knowledge, but we can't be wise with another man's wisdom."

"No man is exempt from saying silly things, the mischief is to say them deliberately."

"Had I been placed among those nations which are said to live still in the sweet freedom of nature's first laws, I assure you I should very gladly have portrayed myself here entire and wholly naked.Thus, reader, I am myself the matter of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and vain a subject."

"D'autant que nous avons cher, estre, et estre consiste en mouvement et action."

"There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly."

"My trade and art is to live."

"There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state."

"Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul."

"Ambition is not a vice of little people."

"I...think it much more supportable to be always alone, than never to be so."

"Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul."

"One should be ever booted and spurred and ready to depart."

"The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to know how to live to purpose."

"We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there."

"From books all I seek is to give myself pleasure by an honourable pastime: or if I do study, I seek only that branch of learning which deals with knowing myself and which teaches me how to live and die well..."

"In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk - they are all part of the curriculum."

"A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself."

"There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened."

"Not being able to govern events, I govern myself."

"I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older."

"Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face."

"Atheism being a proposition as unnatural as monstrous, difficult also and hard to establish in the human understanding, how arrogant soever, there are men enough seen, out of vanity and pride, to be the authors of extraordinary and reforming opinions, and outwardly to affect the profession of them; who, if they are such fools, have, nevertheless, not the power to plant them in their own conscience."

"Antigonus, having taken one of his soldiers into a great degree of favor and esteem for his valor, gave his physicians strict charge to cure him of a long and inward disease under which he had a great while languished, and observing that, after his cure, he went much more coldly to work than before, he asked him what had so altered and cowed him: "Yourself, sir, replied the other, "by having eased me of the pains that made me weary of my life."

"It is not death, it is dying that alarms me."

"It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity."

"The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death."

"Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way."

"An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity."

"All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them our own."

"Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens."

"A straight oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see things but how we see them."

"Once conform once do what others do because they do it and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul."

"How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables."

"I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself."

"I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better."

"Demetrius the grammarian finding in the temple of Delphos a knot of philosophers set chatting together, said to them, "Either I am much deceived,or by your cheerful and pleasant countenances, you are engaged in no very deep discourse. To which one of them, Heracleon the Megarean, replied: " 'Tis for such as are puzzled about inquiring whether the future tense of the verb Ballo be spelt with adouble L, or that hunt after the derivation of the comparatives Cheirou and Beltiou, and the superlatives Cheiriotou and Beliotou, to knit their brows whilst discoursing of their science; but as to philosophical discourses, they always divert and cheer up those that entertain them, and never deject them or make them sad."

"The thing I fear most is fear."

"The clearest sign of wisdom is continued cheerfulness."

"If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love."