Obstinacy and contention are common qualities, most appearing in, and best becoming, a mean and illiterate soul.

When I was young, beautiful ancient statues were castrated, so that the eye might not be corrupted.... Nothing was gained, unless horses and asses had also been castrated.

Laws gain their authority from actual possession and custom: it is perilous to go back to their origins; laws, like our rivers, get greater and nobler as they roll along: follow them back upstream to their sources and all you find is a tiny spring, hardly recognizable; as time goes by it swells with pride and grows in strength.

Getting married is very much like going to a restaurant with friends. You order what you want then when you see what the other person has, you wish you had ordered that.

To philosophize is to doubt.

O human creature,you are the investigator without knowledge, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and all in all, the fool of the farce.

Though we may be learned by another's knowledge, we can never be wise but by our own experience.