Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.

The God of the infinite is the God of the infinitesimal.

Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.

Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.

Montaigne is wrong in declaring that custom ought to be followed simply because it is custom, and not because it is reasonable or just.

We are so presumptuous that we wish to be known to all the world, even to those who come after us; and we are so vain that the esteem of five or six persons immediately around us is enough to amuse and satisfy us.

Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.