The memory represents to us not what we choose but what it pleases.

Necessity is a violent school-mistress.

The world always looks straights ahead; as for me, I turn my gaze inward, I fix it there and keep it busy. Everyone looks in front of him: as for me, I look inside me: I have no business but with myself; I continually observe myself, I take stock of myself, I taste myself. Others...they always go forward; as for me, I roll about in myself.

The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.

What a man hates, he takes seriously.

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.

As great enmities spring from great friendships, and mortal distempers from vigorous health, so do the most surprising and the wildest frenzies from the high and lively agitations of our souls.