The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.

It is in the enjoyment and not in mere possession that makes for happiness.

The world is but a school of inquisition; it is not who shall enter the ring, but who shall run the best courses.

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.

We are neither obstinately nor wilfully to oppose evils, nor truckle under them for want of courage, but that we are naturally to give way to them, according to their condition and our own, we ought to grant free passage to diseases; and I find they stay less with me who let them alone. And I have lost those which are reputed the most tenacious and obstinate of their own defervescence, without any help or art, and contrary to their rules. Let us a little permit nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we.

Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.

The honor of the conquest is rated by the difficulty.