The abominable effort to take one’s sins with one to paradise.

An experience teaches only the good observer; but far from seeking a lesson in it, everyone looks for an argument in experience, and everyone interprets the conclusion in his own way.

Humanity cherishes its swaddling clothes; but it shall not grow up unless it can free itself from them. Turning down his mother's breast does not make the weaned child ungrateful. ... Rise up naked, valiant; make the sheaths crack; push aside the stakes; to grow straight you need no more than the thrust of your sap and the call of the sun.

To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom.

Only fools don't contradict themselves

Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.

The miser puts his gold pieces into a coffer; but as soon as the coffer is closed, it is as if it were empty.