There is no more expensive thing than a free gift.

Experience has further taught me this, that we ruin ourselves by impatience.

Man (in good earnest) is a marvellous vain, fickle, and unstable subject, and on whom it is very hard to form any certain and uniform judgment.

Kings and philosophers defecate, and so do ladies.

The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold. The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbor creates a war betwixt princes.

Excellent memories are often coupled with feeble judgments.

The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness.

Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.

One must be a little foolish if one does not want to be even more stupid.

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.

Pride and curiosity are the two scourges of our souls. The latter prompts us to poke our noses into everything, and the former forbids us to leave anything unresolved and undecided.

The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to live with purpose.

Don’t discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.

There are no truths, only moments of claryty passing for answers.

I had rather fashion my mind than furnish it.

To distract myself from tiresome thoughts, I have only to resort to books; they easily draw my mind to themselves and away from other things.

When I express my opinions it is so as to reveal the measure of my sight not the measure of the thing.

Let every foot have its own shoe.

Life itself is neither a good nor an evil: life is where good or evil find a place, depending on how you make it for them.

Valor is strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul; it consists not in the worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own.

The thing I fear most is fear.

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

Other people do not see you at all, but guess at you by uncertain conjectures.

I enjoy books as misers enjoy treasures, because I know I can enjoy them whenever I please.

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

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.

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.

If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.

I listen with attention to the judgment of all men; but so far as I can remember, I have followed none but my own.

There is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others.

Why do people respect the package rather than the man?

Saying is one thing and doing is another

No wind favors he who has no destined port.

Every movement reveals us.

No-one is exempt from speaking nonsense – the only misfortune is to do it solemnly.

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself.

I know that the arms of friendship are long enough to reach from the one end of the world to the other.

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

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

There is no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well and naturally.

Marriage happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

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

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.

Every man has within himself the entire human condition

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

The greater part of the world’s troubles are due to questions of grammar.

Confidence in others’ honesty is no light testimony of one’s own integrity.

Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.

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.

My art and profession is to live.

Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.

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

Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness.

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

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind for it.

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.

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

I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.

There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.

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

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

He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.

When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.

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

I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.

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

On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.