Now there cannot be first principles for men, unless the Divinity has revealed them; all the rest--beginning, middle, and end--isnothing but dreams and smoke.

Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it? .. But in truth I know nothing about the philosophy of education except this: that the greatest and the most important difficulty known to human learning seems to lie in that area which treats how to bring up children and how to educate them.

It is only certain that there is nothing certain, and that nothing is more miserable or more proud than man.

Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.

The soul that has no established aim loses itself

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

I would like to suggest that our minds are swamped by too much study and by too much matter just as plants are swamped by too much water or lamps by too much oil; that our minds, held fast and encumbered by so many diverse preoccupations, may well lose the means of struggling free, remaining bowed and bent under the load; except that it is quite otherwise: the more our souls are filled, the more they expand; examples drawn from far-off times show, on the contrary, that great soldiers ad statesmen were also great scholars.