There is not a single ill-doer who could not be turned to some good.

To live is not breathing it is action.

Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it.

Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity.

I love idleness. I love to busy myself about trifles, to begin a hundred things and not finish one of them, to come and go as my fancy bids me, to change my plan every moment, to follow a fly in all its circlings, to try and uproot a rock to see what is underneath, eagerly to begin a ten-years' task to give it up after ten minutes: in short, to fritter away the whole day inconsequentially and incoherently, and to follow nothing but the whim of the moment.

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

Love, known to the person by whom it is inspired, becomes more bearable.