God is favorable to those whom he makes to die by degrees; 'tis the only benefit of old age. The last death will be so much the less painful: it will kill but a quarter of a man or but half a one at most.

Live as long as you please, you will strike nothing off the time you will have to spend dead.

In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.

Water, earth, air, fire, and the other parts of this structure of mine are no more instruments of your life than instruments of your death. Why do you fear your last day? It contributes no more to your death than each of the others. The last step does not cause the fatigue, but reveals it. All days travel toward death, the last one reaches it.

Why did I love her? Because it was her; because it was me.

Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.

Virtue can have naught to do with ease. . . . It craves a steep and thorny path.