A man should think less of what he eats and more with whom he eats because no food is so satisfying as good company.

We call comeliness a mischance in the first respect, which belongs principally to the face.

Petty vexations may at times be petty, but still they are vexations. The smallest and most inconsiderable annoyances are the most piercing. As small letters weary the eye most, so the smallest affairs disturb us most.

The most unhappy and frail creatures are men and yet they are the proudest.

There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.

This idea is more surely understood by interrogation; WHAT DO I KNOW? which I bear as my motto with the emblem of a pair of scales.

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.