God defend me from being an honest man according to the description which every day I see made by each man to his own glorification

This very Rome that we behold deserves our love ...: the only common and universal city.

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

The daughter-in-law of Pythagoras said that a woman who goes to bed with a man ought to lay aside her modesty with her skirt, and put it on again with her petticoat

It is a monstrous thing that I will say, but I will say it all the same: I find in many things more restraint and order in my morals than in my opinions, and my lust less depraved than my reason.

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

It makes me hate accepting things that are probable when they are held up before me as infallibly true. I prefer these words which tone down and modify the hastiness of our propositions: "Perhaps, In some sort, Some, They say, I think," and the like.