How many worthy men have we known to survive their own reputation, who have seen and suffered the honor and glory most justly acquired in their youth, extinguished in their own presence?

Truth and reason are common to everyone, and are no more his who spake them first than his who speaks them after.

It is putting a very high price on one's conjectures to have someone roasted alive on their account.

Wine is the benevolent god, who gives back gaiety to men and restores youth to the old.

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.

If your doctor does not think it good for you to sleep, to drink wine, or to eat of a particular dish, do not worry; I will find you another who will not agree with him.

Pythagoras used to say that life resembles the Olympic Games: a few people strain their muscles to carry off a prize; others bring trinkets to sell to the crowd for gain; and some there are, and not the worst, who seek no other profit than to look at the show and see how and why everything is done; spectators of the life of other people in order to judge and regulate their own.