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

It is an absolute perfection... to get the very most out of one's individuality.

There is nothing on which men are commonly more intent than on making a way for their opinions.

It is a small soul, buried beneath the weight of affairs, that does not know how to get clean away from them, that cannot put them aside and pick them up again.

Man (in good earnest) is a marvellous vain, fickle, and unstable subject, and on whom it is very hard to form any certain and uniform judgment.

We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.

We find ourselves more taken with the running up and down, the games, and puerile simplicities of our children, than we do, afterward, with their most complete actions; as if we had loved them for our sport, like monkeys, and not as men.