Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical.

Bless yourself with holy water, have Masses said, and so on; by a simple and natural process this will make you believe, and will dull you - will quiet your proudly critical intellect.

The entire ocean is affected by a single pebble.

We think very little of time present; we anticipate the future, as being too slow, and with a view to hasten it onward, we recall the past to stay it as too swiftly gone. We are so thoughtless, that we thus wander through the hours which are not here, regardless only of the moment that is actually our own.

Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence. Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion.

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

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