I would rather produce my passions than brood over them at my expense; they grow languid when they have vent and expression. It is better that their point should operate outwardly than be turned against us.

Is there a polity better ordered, the offices better distributed, and more inviolably observed and maintained, than that of bees?

Thus we should beware of clinging to vulgar opinions, and judge things by reason's way, not by popular say.

How often our involuntary facial motions testify to the thoughts we were keeping secret, and betray us to those around!

Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.

My errors are by now natural and incorrigible; but the good that worthy men do the public by making themselves imitable, I shall perhaps do by making myself evitable.

For among other things he had been counseled to bring me to love knowledge and duty by my own choice, without forcing my will, and to educate my soul entirely through gentleness and freedom.