The thing in the world I am most afraid of is fear.

If these Essays were worthy of being judged, it might fall out, in my opinion, that they would not find much favour, either with common and vulgar minds, or with uncommon and eminent ones: the former would not find enough in them, the latter would find too much; they might manage to live somewhere in the middle region.

A speech belongs half to the speaker and half to the listener.

Socrates ... brought human wisdom back down from heaven, where she was wasting her time, and restored her to man.... It is impossible to go back further and lower. He did a great favor to human nature by showing how much it can do by itself.

We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade; our life, like the harmony of the world, is composed of contrary things, and one part is no less necessary than the other.

It is an absolute perfection... to get the very most out of one's individuality.

He that had never seen a river, imagined the first he met with to be the sea.