Man is doomed either squander his youth, which is the only time he has to store provisions for the coming years and provide for his own well-being, or to spend his youth procuring pleasures in advance for that time of life when he will be too old to enjoy them.

Children find everything in nothing; men find nothing in everything.

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

The most solid pleasure in this life is the empty pleasure of illusion.

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.

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

Man is almost always as wicked as his needs require.