Those who make a practice of comparing human actions are never so perplexed as when they try to see them as a whole and in the same light; for they commonly contradict each other so strangely that it seems impossible that they have come from the same shop.

I see men ordinarily more eager to discover a reason for things than to find out whether the things are so.

Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous.

I love a gay and sociable wisdom, and shun harshness and austerity in behaviour, holding every surly countenance suspect.

There are truths on this side of the Pyrenees which are falsehoods on the other

There is nothing useless in nature; not even uselessness itself

If these Essays were worthy of being judged, it might fall out, in my opinion, that they would not find much favour, either with common and vulgar minds, or with uncommon and eminent ones: the former would not find enough in them, the latter would find too much; they might manage to live somewhere in the middle region.