I do not correct my first imaginings by my second--well, yes, perhaps a word or so, but only to vary, not to delete. I want to represent the course of my humors and I want people to see each part at its birth.

What am I to choose? "Choose what you please, as long as you choose." There you have a foolish answer, which seems to be the outcome, however, of all Dogmatism, which will not allow us to be ignorant of that which we are ignorant.

Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.

There is nothing so extreme that is not allowed by the custom of some nation or other.

The recognition of virtue is not less valuable from the lips of the man who hates it, since truth forces him to acknowledge it; and though he may be unwilling to take it into his inmost soul, he at least decks himself out in its trappings.

It is for little souls, that truckle under the weight of affairs, not to know how clearly to disengage themselves, and not to know how to lay them aside and take them up again.

Pleasure itself is painful at the bottom.