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

“The continuous work of our life is to build death.”

“I speak to the paper, as I speak to the first person I meet.”

“Excellent memories are often coupled with feeble judgments.”

“We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.”

“My business is only to keep myself in motion, whilst motion pleases me; I only walk for the walk's sake.”

“It is not reasonable that art should win the place of honor over our great and powerful mother Nature. We have so overloaded the beauty and richness of her works by our inventions that we have quite smothered her.”

“If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it.”

“My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.”

“I had rather complain of ill-fortune than be ashamed of victory.”

“Nothing is so firmly believed as that which is least known.”

“Women are not entirely wrong when they reject the moral rules proclaimed in society, since it is we men alone who have made them.”

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

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

“There is more ado to interpret interpretations than to interpret things, and more books upon books than upon any other subject; we do nothing but comment upon one another. Every place swarms with commentaries; of authors there is great scarcity.”

“It is a small soul, buried beneath the weight of affairs, that does not know how to get clean away from them, that cannot put them aside and pick them up again.”

“We should tend our freedom wisely.”

“There is indeed a certain sense of gratification when we do a good deed that gives us inward satisfaction, and a generous pride that accompanies a good conscience…These testimonies of a good conscience are pleasant; and such a natural pleasure is very beneficial to us; it is the only payment that can never fail. “On Repentance”

“How many things were articles of faith to us yesterday that are fables to us today?”

“Our zeal works wonders, whenever it supports our inclination toward hatred, cruelty, ambition.”

“Whoever will be cured of ignorance, let him confess it.”

“We need to interpret interpretations more than to interpret things.”

“The reverse side of truth has a hundred thousand shapes and no defined limits.”

“The beautiful souls are they that are unniversal, open, and ready for all things.”

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

“He who fears he will suffer, already suffers from his fear.”

“Life should be an aim unto itself, a purpose unto itself.”

“We must learn to suffer whatever we cannot avoid. Our life is composed, like the harmony of the world, of dischords as well as different tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud. If a musician liked only some of them, what could he sing? He has got to know how to use all of them and blend them together. So too must we with good and ill, which are of one substance with our life.”

“It is putting a very high price on one's conjectures to have someone roasted alive on their account.”

“When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not playing with me rather than I with her?”

“~The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them ~”

“No spirited mind remains within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength; it has impulses beyond its power of achievement.”

“A man is not hurt so much by what happens, as by his opinion of what happens.”

“Between ourselves, there are two things that I have always observed to be in singular accord: supercelestial thoughts and subterranean conduct.”

“No matter that we may mount on stilts, we still must walk on our own legs. And on the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.”

“Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.”

“It is a dangerous and fateful presumption, besides the absurd temerity that it implies, to disdain what we do not comprehend. For after you have established, according to your fine undertstanding, the limits of truth and falsehood, and it turns out that you must necessarily believe things even stranger than those you deny, you are obliged from then on to abandon these limits.”

“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?”

“Better to be tentative than to be recklessly sure- to be an apprentice at sixty, than to present oneself as a doctor at ten.”

“In our time the most warlike nations are the most rude and ignorant.”

“No one should be subjected to force over things which belonged to him.”

“It is only certain that there is nothing certain, and that nothing is more miserable or more proud than man.”

“Natural inclinations are assisted and reinforced by education, but they are hardly ever altered or overcome.”

“How many we know who have fled the sweetness of a tranquil life in their homes, among the friends, to seek the horror of uninhabitable deserts; who have flung themselves into humiliation, degradation, and the contempt of the world, and have enjoyed these and even sought them out.”

“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...”

“Such as are in immediate fear of a losing their estates, of banishment, or of slavery, live in perpetual anguish, and lose all appetite and repose; whereas such as are actually poor, slaves, or exiles, ofttimes live as merrily as other folk.”

“We are all blockheads.”

“We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe, we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.”

“Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses.”

“The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to live to the point.”