In my youth I studied for ostentation; later, a little to gain wisdom; now, for recreation; never for gain.

When I am attached by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.

It costs an unreasonable woman no more to pass over one reason than another; they cherish themselves most where they are most wrong.

We took advantage of [the Indians'] ignorance and inexperience to incline them the more easily toward treachery, lewdness, avarice, and every sort of inhumanity and cruelty, after the example and pattern of our ways.

Experience has further taught me this, that we ruin ourselves by impatience.

As soon as women become ours we are no longer theirs.

I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.