Anyone who does not feel sufficiently strong in memory should not meddle with lying.

Presumption is our natural and original malady. The most vulnerable and frail of all creatures is man, and at the same time the most arrogant.

I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.

My trade and my art is living. He who forbids me to speak about it according to my sense, experience, and practice, let him orderthe architect to speak of buildings not according to himself but according to his neighbor; according to another man's knowledge, not according to his own.

There is no desire more natural than the desire of knowledge. (Il n'est desir plus naturel que le desir de connaissance)

I leaf through books, I do not study them. What I retain of them is something I no longer recognize as anyone else's.

It is an injustice that an old, broken, half-dead father should enjoy alone, in a corner of his hearth, possessions that would suffice for the advancement and maintenance of many children.