If anyone conceives that he is loved by another, and believes that he has given no cause for such love, he will love that other in return.

As though God had turned away from the wise, and written his decrees, not in the mind of man but in the entrails of beasts, or left them to be proclaimed by the inspiration and instinct of fools, madmen, and birds. Such is the unreason to which terror can drive mankind!

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods.

Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love.

He that can carp in the most eloquent or acute manner at the weakness of the human mind is held by his fellows as almost divine.

Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them.