As for me, then, I love life and cultivate it just as God has been pleased to grant it to us.

What we are told of the inhabitants of Brazil, that they never die but of old age, is attributed to the tranquility and serenity of their climate; I rather attribute it to the tranquility and serenity of their souls, which are free from all passion, thought, or any absorbing and unpleasant labors. Those people spend their lives in an admirable simplicity and ignorance, without letters, without law, without king, without any manner of religion.

Virtue cannot be followed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some other purpose, she presently pulls it away again.

He who lives not to others, lives little to himself.

The first lessons with which we should irrigate his mind should be those which teach him to know himself, and to know how to die ... and to live.

Socrates ... brought human wisdom back down from heaven, where she was wasting her time, and restored her to man.... It is impossible to go back further and lower. He did a great favor to human nature by showing how much it can do by itself.

It is the rule of rules, and the general law of all laws, that every person should observe those of the place where he is.