Statesman are suspected of plotting against mankind, rather than consulting their interests, and are esteemed more crafty than learned.

After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.

Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak.

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

Reality and perfection are synonymous.

Indulge yourself in pleasures only in so far as they are necessary for the preservation of health.

Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things. For if a man says that the lines which are drawn from the centre of the circle to the circumference are not equal, he understands by the circle, at all events for the time, something else than mathematicians understand by it.