Aesop, that great man, saw his master making water as he walked. "What!" he said, "Must we void ourselves as we run?" Use our timeas best we may, yet a great part of it will still be idly and ill spent.

To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death... We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere." "To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.

Lying is a disgraceful vice, and one that Plutarch paints in most disgraceful colors, when he says that it is "affording testimony that one first despises God, and then fears men." It is not possible more happily to describe its horrible, disgusting, and abandoned nature; for can we imagine anything more vile than to be cowards with regard to men, and brave with regard to God.

Other people do not see you at all, but guess at you by uncertain conjectures.

The knowledge of courtesy and good manners is a very necessary study. It is like grace and beauty, that which begets liking and an inclination to love one another at the first sight.

Writing does not cause misery. It is born of misery.

Man is the sole animal whose nudities offend his own companions, and the only one who, in his natural actions, withdraws and hides himself from his own kind.