Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.

It is a dangerous and fateful presumption, besides the absurd temerity that it implies, to disdain what we do not comprehend. For after you have established, according to your fine undertstanding, the limits of truth and falsehood, and it turns out that you must necessarily believe things even stranger than those you deny, you are obliged from then on to abandon these limits.

The lack of wealth is easily repaired but the poverty of the soul is irreplaceable.

An ancient father says that a dog we know is better company than a man whose language we do not understand.

Anyone who does not feel sufficiently strong in memory should not meddle with lying.

Every man has within himself the entire human condition

Pythagoras used to say that life resembles the Olympic Games: a few people strain their muscles to carry off a prize; others bring trinkets to sell to the crowd for gain; and some there are, and not the worst, who seek no other profit than to look at the show and see how and why everything is done; spectators of the life of other people in order to judge and regulate their own.