If atoms do, by chance, happen to combine themselves into so many shapes, why have they never combined together to form a house or a slipper? By the same token, why do we not believe that if innumerable letters of the Greek alphabet were poured all over the market-place they would eventually happen to form the text of the Iliad?

To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind to 't.

The first distinction among men, and the first consideration that gave one precedence over another, was doubtless the advantage of beauty.

Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.

When all is summed up, a man never speaks of himself without loss; his accusations of himself are always believed; his praises never.

We have no participation in Being, because all human nature is ever midway between being born and dying, giving off only a vague image and shadow of itself, and a weak and uncertain opinion. And if you chance to fix your thoughts on trying to grasp its essence, it would be neither more nor less than if your tried to clutch water.

The world is but a perennial movement. All things in it are in constant motion-the earth, the rocks of the Caucasus, the pyramids of Egypt-both with the common motion and with their own.