When a Roman was returning from a trip, he used to send someone ahead to let his wife know, so as not to surprise her in the act.

Virtue shuns ease as a companion. It demands a rough and thorny path.

Man is quite insane. He wouldn?t know how to create a maggot, and he creates Gods by the dozen.

Greatness of soul consists not so much in soaring high and in pressing forward, as in knowing how to adapt and limit oneself.

Que sçais-je?" (What do I know?)

I admire the assurance and confidence everyone has in himself, whereas there is hardly anything I am sure I know or that I dare give my word I can do.

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy; research, the progress; ignorance, the end. There is, by heavens, a strong and generous kind of ignorance that yields nothing, for honour and courage, to knowledge: an ignorance to conceive which needs no less knowledge than to conceive knowledge.