I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.

Presumption is our natural and original malady. The most vulnerable and frail of all creatures is man, and at the same time the most arrogant.

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.

Greatness of soul consists not so much in soaring high and in pressing forward, as in knowing how to adapt and limit oneself.

My opinion is that we must lend ourselves to others and give ourselves only to ourselves. If my will happened to be prone to mortgage and attach itself, I would not last: I am too tender, both by nature and by practice.

I want death to find me planting my cabbages.