Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.

One may disavow and disclaim vices that surprise us and whereto our passions transport us. But those which by long habit are rooted in a strong and anchored in a powerful will are not subject to contradiction. Repentance is but a denying of our will, and an opposition of our fantasies, which diverts us here and there.

If to take up books were to take them in, and if to see them were to consider them, and to run through them were to grasp them, I should be wrong to make myself out quite as ignorant as I say I am.

It is not my deeds that I write down, it is myself, my essence.

Whom conscience, ne'er asleep, Wounds with incessant strokes, not loud, but deep.

Everyone gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country.

Friendship that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute sovereignty, can admit of no rival.