A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.

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.

We commend a horse for his strength, and sureness of foot, and not for his rich caparisons; a greyhound for his share of heels, not for his fine collar; a hawk for her wing, not for her jesses and bells. Why, in like manner, do we not value a man for what is properly his own? He has a great train, a beautiful palace, so much credit, so many thousand pounds a year, and all these are about him, but not in him.

Marriage can be compared to a cage: birds outside it despair to enter, and birds within, to escape.

There is no desire more natural than the desire of knowledge. (Il n'est desir plus naturel que le desir de connaissance)

We need to interpret interpretations more than to interpret things.

Rash and incessant scolding runs into custom and renders itself despised.