Women are more susceptible to pain than to pleasure.

The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from Custom.

Oh senseless man, who cannot possibly make a worm or a flea and yet will create Gods by the dozen!

Is it reasonable that even the arts should take advantage of and profit by our natural stupidity and feebleness of mind?

Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably and well in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them.

When all is summed up, a man never speaks of himself without loss; his accusations of himself are always believed; his praises never.

No two men ever judged alike of the same thing, and it is impossible to find two opinions exactly similar, not only in different men but in the same men at different times.