No-one is exempt from speaking nonsense – the only misfortune is to do it solemnly.

If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions; but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.

There is no greater enemy to those who would please than expectation.

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

No man dies before his hour. The time you leave behind was no more yours, than that which was before your birth, and concerneth you no more.

Those who make a practice of comparing human actions are never so perplexed as when they try to see them as a whole and in the same light; for they commonly contradict each other so strangely that it seems impossible that they have come from the same shop.

Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.