Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.

I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray... I am myself the matter of my book.

I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.

Most pleasures embrace us but to strangle.

It costs an unreasonable woman no more to pass over one reason than another; they cherish themselves most where they are most wrong.

I quote others in order to better express myself.

Authors communicate with the people by some special extrinsic mark; I am the first to do so by my entire being, as Michel de Montaigne.