The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

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

It is a dangerous and fateful presumption, besides the absurd temerity that it implies, to disdain what we do not comprehend. For after you have established, according to your fine undertstanding, the limits of truth and falsehood, and it turns out that you must necessarily believe things even stranger than those you deny, you are obliged from then on to abandon these limits.

How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.

An able reader often discovers in other people's writings perfections beyond those that the author put in or perceived, and lends them richer meanings and aspects.

Valor is strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul; it consists not in the worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own.

Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.