Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.

It is a dangerous and fateful presumption, besides the absurd temerity that it implies, to disdain what we do not comprehend. For after you have established, according to your fine undertstanding, the limits of truth and falsehood, and it turns out that you must necessarily believe things even stranger than those you deny, you are obliged from then on to abandon these limits.

There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.

How often our involuntary facial motions testify to the thoughts we were keeping secret, and betray us to those around!

To understand via the heart is not to understand.

The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.

Books are pleasant, but if by being over-studious we impair our health and spoil our good humour, two of the best things we have, let us give it over. I, for my part, am one of those who think no fruit derived from them can recompense so great a loss.