The only shame is to have none.

To doubt is a misfortune, but to seek when in doubt is an indispensable duty. So he who doubts and seeks not is at once unfortunate and unfair.

The sweetness of glory is so great that, join it to what we will, even to death, we love it.

Men are so completely fools by necessity that he is but a fool in a higher strain of folly who does not confess his foolishness.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

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

The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.