I enter into discussion and argument with great freedom and ease, inasmuch as opinion finds me in a bad soil to penetrate and take deep root in. No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it offers to my own. There is no fancy so frivolous and so extravagant that it does not seem to me quite suitable to the production of the human mind.

When we see a man with bad shoes, we say it is no wonder, if he is a shoemaker.

I admire the assurance and confidence everyone has in himself, whereas there is hardly anything I am sure I know or that I dare give my word I can do.

I do not portray the thing in itself. I portray the passage; not a passing from one age to another, or, as the people put it, from seven years to seven years, but from day to day, from minute to minute.

Who does not in some sort live to others, does not live much to himself.

Intemperance is the plaque of sensuality, and temperance is not its bane but its seasoning.

To philosophize is nothing else than to prepare oneself for death.