People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. It is strange that these voices often contradict each other?

Many men, seemingly impelled by fortune, hasten forward to meet misfortune half way.

If there wasn't a God we would have to invent one to keep people sane.

I believed that I was approaching the end of my days without having tasted to the full any of the pleasures for which my heart thirsted...without having ever tasted that passion which, through lack of an object, was always suppressed. ...The impossibility of attaining the real persons precipitated me into the land of chimeras; and seeing nothing that existed worthy of my exalted feelings, I fostered them in an ideal world which my creative imagination soon peopled with beings after my own heart.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.