It is an absolute perfection and virtually divine to know how to enjoy our being rightfully.

We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade.

Is there a polity better ordered, the offices better distributed, and more inviolably observed and maintained, than that of bees?

The world always looks straights ahead; as for me, I turn my gaze inward, I fix it there and keep it busy. Everyone looks in front of him: as for me, I look inside me: I have no business but with myself; I continually observe myself, I take stock of myself, I taste myself. Others...they always go forward; as for me, I roll about in myself.

It was truly very good reason that we should be beholden to God only, and to the favour of his grace, for the truth of so noble a belief, since from his sole bounty we receive the fruit of immortality, which consists in the enjoyment of eternal beatitude.... The more we give and confess to owe and render to God, we do it with the greater Christianity.

Once you have decided to keep a certain pile, it is no longer yours; for you can't spend it.

A man must learn to endure patiently what he cannot avoid conveniently.