If faces were not alike, we could not distinguish men from beasts; if they were not different, we could not tell one man from another.

I seek in books only to give myself pleasure by honest amusement; or if I study, I seek only the learning that treats of the knowledge of myself and instructs me in how to die well and live well.

Our wisdom and deliberation for the most part follow the lead of chance.

The recognition of virtue is not less valuable from the lips of the man who hates it, since truth forces him to acknowledge it; and though he may be unwilling to take it into his inmost soul, he at least decks himself out in its trappings.

If to take up books were to take them in, and if to see them were to consider them, and to run through them were to grasp them, I should be wrong to make myself out quite as ignorant as I say I am.

Friendship is the highest degree of perfection in society.

Now there cannot be first principles for men, unless the Divinity has revealed them; all the rest--beginning, middle, and end--isnothing but dreams and smoke.