The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts, and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible.

Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably and well in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them.

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

What we are told of the inhabitants of Brazil, that they never die but of old age, is attributed to the tranquility and serenity of their climate; I rather attribute it to the tranquility and serenity of their souls, which are free from all passion, thought, or any absorbing and unpleasant labors. Those people spend their lives in an admirable simplicity and ignorance, without letters, without law, without king, without any manner of religion.

The least strained and most natural ways of the soul are the most beautiful; the best occupations are the least forced.

Only he can judge of matters great and high whose soul is likewise.

If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.