There is more ado to interpret interpretations than to interpret things, and more books upon books than upon any other subject; we do nothing but comment upon one another. Every place swarms with commentaries; of authors there is great scarcity.

Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately.

For table-talk, I prefer the pleasant and witty before the learned and the grave; in bed, beauty before goodness.

Our speech has its weaknesses and its defects, like all the rest. Most of the occasions for the troubles of the world are grammatical.

Kings and philosophers defecate, and so do ladies.

We hold death, poverty, and grief for our principal enemies; but this death, which some repute the most dreadful of all dreadful things, who does not know that others call it the only secure harbor from the storm and tempests of life, the sovereign good of nature, the sole support of liberty, and the common and sudden remedy of all evils?

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.