“People try to get out of themselves and to escape from the man. This is folly; instead of transforming themselves into angels, they turn into beast; instead of lifting, they degrade themselves. These transcendental humors frighten me, like lofty and inaccessible heights.”

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

“What hits you affects you and wakes you up more then what pleases you.”

“The man who establishes his argument by noise and command knows that his reason is weak.”

“Each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice.”

“We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.”

“If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God and a coward towards men.”

“In general I ask for books that make use of learning, not those that build it up.”

“Sorry the man, to my mind, who has not in his own home a place to be all by himself, to pay his court privately to himself, to hide!”

“To learn that we have said or done a foolish thing, that is nothing; we must learn that we are nothing but fools, a far broader and more important lesson.”

“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.”

“Death is not one of our social managements; it is a scene with one character.”

“The pettiest and slightest nuisances are the most acute; and as small letters hurt and tire the eyes most, so do trifling matters sting us most.”

“The ceaseless labor of your life is to build the house of death.”

“The customs and practices of life in society sweep us along.”

“I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.”

“It is an absolute perfection and virtually divine to know how to enjoy our being rightfully. We seek other conditions because we do not understand the use of our own, and go outside of ourselves because we do not know what it is like inside. Yet there is no use our mounting on stilts, for on stilts we must still walk on our own legs. And on the loftiest throne in the world we are still sitting only on our own rump.”

“There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.”

“This, reader, is an honest book...I want to appear in my simple, natural and everyday dress, without strain or artifice; for it is myself that I portray”

“That is why Bias jested with those who were going through the perils of a great storm with him and calling on the gods for help: "Shut up," he said, "so that they do not realize that you are here with me.”

“Men have seemed miraculous to the world, in whom their wives and valets have never seen anything even worth noticing. Few men have been admired by their own households.”

“The most beautiful lives, to my mind,are those that conform to the common human pattern, with order, but without miracle, and without eccentricity.”

“If any one should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I feel it could no otherwise be expressed than by making answer, ‘Because it was he; because it was I.’ There is, beyond what I am able to say, I know not what inexplicable and inevitable power that brought on this union.”

“I know no marriages which fail and come to grief more quickly than those which are set on foot by beauty and amorous desire.”

“I would rather be an authority on myself than on Cicero.”

“Meditation is a powerful and full study as can effectually taste and employ themselves.”

“All is a-swarm with commentaries: of authors there is a dearth.”

“To compensate a little for the treachery and weakness of my memory, so extreme that it has happened to me more than once to pick up again...books which I have read carefully a few years before. I have adopted the habit for some time now of adding at the end of each book the time I finished reading it and the judgment I have derived of it as a whole, so that this may represent to me at least the sense and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it.”

“If virtue cannot shine bright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say that she cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is from her that she derives her reputation and honor?”

“A noble heart should not belie its thoughts; it wants to reveal itself even to its inmost depths. There everything is good, at least everything is human.”

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

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

“I have not seen anywhere in the world a more obvious malformed person and miracle than myself. Through use and time we become conditioned to anything strange; but the more I become familiar with and know myself, the more my deformity amazes me and the less I understand myself.”

“I seek in the reading of my books only to please myself by an irreproachable diversion; or if I study it is for no other science than that which treats of the knowledge of myself, and instructs me how to die and live well.”

“Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little. Make use of time while it is present with you. It depends upon your will, and not upon the number of days, to have a sufficient length of life.”

“Ease crushes us.”

“We are entirely made up of bits and pieces, woven together so diversely and so shapelessly that each one of them pulls its own way at every moment.”

“If anyone gets intoxicated with his knowledge when he looks beneath him, let him turn his eyes upward toward past ages, and he will lower his horns, finding there so many thousands of minds that trample him underfoot. If he gets into some flattering presumption about his valor, let him remember the lives of the two Scipios, so many armies, so many nations, all of whom leave him so far behind them. No particular quality will make a man proud who balances it against the many weaknesses and imperfections that are also in him, and, in the end, against the nullity of man’s estate.”

“Truth for us nowadays is not what is, but what others can be brought to accept: just as we call money not only legal tender but any counterfeit coins in circulation.”

“We need but little learning to live happily.”

“If I am a man of some reading, I am a man of no retentiveness.”

“ I once took pleasure some place in seeing men, through piety, take a vow of ignorance, as of chastity, poverty, penitence. It is also castrating our disorderly appetites, to blunt that cupidity that pricks us on to the study of books, and to deprive the soul of that voluptuous complacency which tickles us with the notion of being learned.”

“Glory and curiosity are the scourges of the soul; the last prompts us to thrust our noses into everything, the other forbids us to leave anything doubtful and undecided.”

“Marriage is like a cage one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside desperate to get out...”

“The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere is to be nowhere.es”

“I will follow the good side right to the fire, but not into it if I can help it.”

“Everyone calls barbarity what he is not accustomed to.”

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

“To an atheist all writings tend to atheism: he corrupts the most innocent matter with his own venom.”

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