And truly Philosophy is but sophisticated poetry. Whence do those ancient writers derive all their authority but from the poets?

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy; research, the progress; ignorance, the end. There is, by heavens, a strong and generous kind of ignorance that yields nothing, for honour and courage, to knowledge: an ignorance to conceive which needs no less knowledge than to conceive knowledge.

To know how to live is my trade and my art.

Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie.

Their [the Skeptics'] way of speaking is: "I settle nothing. . . . I do not understand it. . . . Nothing seems true that may not seem false." Their sacramental word is . . . , which is to say, I suspend my judgment.

If love and ambition should be in equal balance, and come to jostle with equal force, I make no doubt but that the last would win the prize.

Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.