All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them our own.

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.

Nor is it enough to toughen up his soul; you must also toughen up his muscles.

We do not correct the man we hang; we correct others by him.

A learned man is not learned in all things; but a sufficient man is sufficient throughout, even to ignorance itself.

To divert myself from a troublesome fancy, it is but to run to my books; they presently fix me to them, and drive the other out of my thoughts, and do not mutiny to see that I have only recourse to them for want of other more, real, natural, and lively conveniences; they always receive me with the same kindness.

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.