The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.

We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.

Custom creates the whole of equity, for the simple reason that it is accepted.

[On vanity:] The nose of Cleopatra: if it had been shorter, the face of the earth would have changed.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

There should be in eloquence that which is pleasing and that which is real; but that which is pleasing should itself be real.

What a strange vanity painting is; it attracts admiration by resembling the original, we do not admire.