A man must keep a little back shop where he can be himself without reserve. In solitude alone can he know true freedom.

I consider it equal injustice to set our heart against natural pleasures and to set our heart too much on them. We should neither pursue them, nor flee them; we should accept them.

Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.

The smallest annoyances, disturb us the most.

The clatter of arms drowns out the voice of law.

Now, of all the benefits that virtue confers upon us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest.

He who lives not to others, lives little to himself.