The same reason that makes us chide and brawl and fall out with any of our neighbors, causeth a war to follow between Princes.

A man should keep for himself a little back shop, all his own, quite unadulterated, in which he establishes his true freedom and chief place of seclusion and solitude.

The common notions that we find in credit around us and infused into our souls by our fathers' seed, these seem to be the universal and natural ones. Whence it comes to pass that what is off the hinges of custom, people believe to be off the hinges of reason.

Let [children] be able to do all things, and love to do only the good.

He who fears he will suffer, already suffers from his fear.

Truly it is reasonable to make a great distinction between the faults that come from our weakness and those that come from our wickedness.

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy; research, the progress; ignorance, the end. There is, by heavens, a strong and generous kind of ignorance that yields nothing, for honour and courage, to knowledge: an ignorance to conceive which needs no less knowledge than to conceive knowledge.