I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.

I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.

Is there a polity better ordered, the offices better distributed, and more inviolably observed and maintained, than that of bees?

The reverse side of truth has a hundred thousand shapes and no defined limits.

Not because Socrates said so, but because it is in truth my own disposition — and perchance to some excess — I look upon all men as my compatriots, and embrace a Pole as a Frenchman, making less account of the national than of the universal and common bond.

There is nothing so extreme that is not allowed by the custom of some nation or other.

Virtue can have naught to do with ease. . . . It craves a steep and thorny path.