We have no participation in Being, because all human nature is ever midway between being born and dying, giving off only a vague image and shadow of itself, and a weak and uncertain opinion. And if you chance to fix your thoughts on trying to grasp its essence, it would be neither more nor less than if your tried to clutch water.

I look upon the too good opinion that man has of himself, as the nursing mother of all false opinions, both public and private.

Why dost thou complain of this world? It detains thee not; thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in pain.

Each person calls barbarism whatever is not his or her own practice.... We may call Cannibals barbarians, in respect to the rulesof reason, but not in respect to ourselves, who surpass them in every kind of barbarity.

Indeed, there is no such thing as an altogether ugly woman — or altogether beautiful.

The concern that some women show at the absence of their husbands, does not arise from their not seeing them and being with them, but from their apprehension that their husbands are enjoying pleasures in which they do not participate, and which, from their being at a distance, they have not the power of interrupting.

I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but careless of death, and still more of my unfinished garden.