Must we kill to prevent there being any wicked? This is to make both parties wicked instead of one.

The property of power is to protect.

There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present.

It is good to be tired and wearied by the futile search after the true good, that we may stretch out our arms to the Redeemer.

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

We feel neither extreme heat nor extreme cold; qualities that are in excess are so much at variance with our feelings that they are impalpable: we do not feel them, though we suffer from their effects.

It is not in Montaigne, but in myself, that I find all that I see in him.