To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death... We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere." "To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.

Scratching is one of nature's sweetest gratifications, and nearest at hand.

When Socrates, after being relieved of his irons, felt the relish of the itching that their weight had caused in his legs, he rejoiced to consider the close alliance between pain and pleasure.

Others form man; I tell of him, and portray a particular one, very ill-formed, whom I should really make very different from whathe is if I had to fashion him over again. But now it is done.

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

Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.

We perceive no charms that are not sharpened, puffed out, and inflated by artifice. Those which glide along naturally and simply easily escape a sight so gross as ours.