Virtue shuns ease as a companion. It demands a rough and thorny path.

One should always have one's boots on and be ready to leave.

One may disavow and disclaim vices that surprise us and whereto our passions transport us. But those which by long habit are rooted in a strong and anchored in a powerful will are not subject to contradiction. Repentance is but a denying of our will, and an opposition of our fantasies, which diverts us here and there.

Fortune, to show us her power in all things, and to abate our presumption, seeing she could not make fools wise, has made them fortunate.

To understand via the heart is not to understand.

Everyone gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country.

Their [the Skeptics'] way of speaking is: "I settle nothing. . . . I do not understand it. . . . Nothing seems true that may not seem false." Their sacramental word is . . . , which is to say, I suspend my judgment.