I hate war, for it spoils conversation.

It is the passions that do and undo everything.

Hardly anyone knows how much is gained by ignoring the future.

A work of morality, politics, criticism will be more elegant, other things being equal, if it is shaped by the hand of geometry.

I shall leave the world without regret, for it hardly contains a single good listener.

Nature intends that, at fixed periods, men should succeed each other by the instrumentality of death. We shall never outwit Nature; we shall die as usual.

A philosopher will not believe what he sees because he is too busy speculating about what he does not see.