We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others.

What a chimaera then is man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm; depository of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle?

All the troubles of life come upon us because we refuse to sit quietly for a while each day in our rooms.

To find recreation in amusements is not happiness; for this joy springs from alien and extrinsic sources, and is therefore dependent upon and subject to interruption by a thousand accidents, which may minister inevitable affliction.

Those who do not hate their own selfishness and regard themselves as more important than the rest of the world are blind because the truth lies elsewhere

Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go.

Vanity is illustrated in the cause and effect of love, as in the case of Cleopatra.