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

Lay a beam between these two towers of such width as we need to walk on: there is no philosophical wisdom of such great firmness that it can give us courage to walk on it as we should if it were on the ground.

We must reserve a back shop all our own entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.

He that I am reading seems always to have the most force.

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and apply myself to them if they will not apply themselves to me.

Socrates, who was a perfect model in all great qualities, ... hit on a body and face so ugly and so incongruous with the beauty of his soul, he who was so madly in love with beauty.

Shame on all eloquence which leaves us with a taste for itself and not for its substance.