Death is not evil, for it frees man from all ills and takes away his desires along with desire's rewards.

He who travels much has this advantage over others – that the things he remembers soon become remote, so that in a short time they acquire the vague and poetical quality which is only given to other things by time. He who has not traveled at all has this disadvantage – that all his memories are of things present somewhere, since the places with which all his memories are concerned are present.

No human trait deserves less tolerance in everyday life, and gets less, than intolerance.

Men are ready to suffer anything from others or from heaven itself, provided that, when it comes to words, they are untouched.

The greater part of the people we assign to educate our sons we know for certain are not educated. Yet we do not doubt that they can give what they have not received, a thing which cannot be otherwise acquired.

The old man, especially if he is in society in the privacy of his thoughts, though he may protest the opposite, never stops believing that, through some singular exception of the universal rule, he can in some unknown and inexplicable way still make an impression on women.

The surest way of concealing from others the boundaries of one s own knowledge is not to overstep them.