Experience teaches that a strong memory is generally joined to a weak judgment.

I quote others only in order the better to express myself.

After a tongue has once got the knack of lying, it is not to be imagined how impossible almost it is to reclaim it. Whence it comes to pass, that we see some men, who are otherwise very honest, so subject to this vice.

We are never present with, but always beyond ourselves; fear, desire, hope, still push us on toward the future.

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.

One should be ever booted and spurred and ready to depart.

The thing I fear most is fear.