All is one, all is different. How many natures exist in man? How many vocations? And by what chance does each man ordinarily choose what he has heard praised?

When a soldier complains of his hard life (or a labourer, etc.) try giving him nothing to do.

To find recreation in amusements is not happiness; for this joy springs from alien and extrinsic sources, and is therefore dependent upon and subject to interruption by a thousand accidents, which may minister inevitable affliction.

Those whom we call ancient were really new in all things, and properly constituted the infancy of mankind.

Let man then contemplate the whole of nature in her full and grand majesty... No idea approaches it. We may enlarge our conceptions beyond all imaginable space; we only produce atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere.

There are people who lie simply for the sake of lying.

The arithmetical machine produces effects that approach nearer to thought than all the actions of animals. But it does nothing that would enable us to attribute will to it, as to the animals.