In truth, the care and expense of our fathers aims only at furnishing our heads with knowledge; of judgement and virtue, little news.

We are nothing but ceremony; ceremony carries us away, and we leave the substance of things; we hang on to the branches and abandon the trunk and body.

Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses.

It is a rare life that remains orderly even in private.

Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.

The beginnings of all things are weak and tender. We must therefore be clear-sighted in the beginnings, for, as in their budding we discern not the danger, so in their full growth we perceive not the remedy.

A man must keep a little back shop where he can be himself without reserve. In solitude alone can he know true freedom.