The weakness of human reason appears more evidently in those who know it not than in those who know it.

The last advance of reason is to recognize that it is surpassed by innumerable things; it is feeble if it cannot realize that.

All evil stems from this-that we do. Know how to handle your solitude.

When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing.

In proportion as our own mind is enlarged we discover a greater number of men of originality. Commonplace people see no difference between one man and another.

What a chimera then is man. What a novelty! What a monster... what a contradiction, what a prodigy

On the occasions when I have pondered over men's various activities, the dangers and worries they are exposed to at Court or at war, from which so many quarrels, passions, risky, often ill-conceived actions and so on are born, I have often said that man's unhappiness springs from one thing alone, his incapacity to stay quietly in one room.