The most unhappy and frail creatures are men and yet they are the proudest.

Who is it that does not voluntarily exchange his health, his repose, and his very life for reputation and glory? The most useless, frivolous, and false coin that passes current among us.

I enter into discussion and argument with great freedom and ease, inasmuch as opinion finds me in a bad soil to penetrate and take deep root in. No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it offers to my own. There is no fancy so frivolous and so extravagant that it does not seem to me quite suitable to the production of the human mind.

The births of all things are weak and tender and therefore we should have our eyes intent on beginnings.

We call comeliness a mischance in the first respect, which belongs principally to the face.

Difficulty is a coin the learned make use of like jugglers, to conceal the inanity of their art.

All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not honesty and good-nature