Books are pleasant, but if by being over-studious we impair our health and spoil our good humour, two of the best things we have, let us give it over. I, for my part, am one of those who think no fruit derived from them can recompense so great a loss.

It is for little souls, that truckle under the weight of affairs, not to know how clearly to disengage themselves, and not to know how to lay them aside and take them up again.

We must reserve a back shop all our own entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.

It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.

Take care that old age does not wrinkle your spirit even more than your face.

It would be better to have no laws at all, than to have too many.

It is the rule of rules, and the general law of all laws, that every person should observe those of the place where he is.