There is no desire more natural than the desire of knowledge. (Il n'est desir plus naturel que le desir de connaissance)

And one might therefore say of me that in this book I have only made up a bunch of other people's flowers, and that of my own I have only provided the string that ties them together.

Who is it that does not voluntarily exchange his health, his repose, and his very life for reputation and glory? The most useless, frivolous, and false coin that passes current among us.

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.

I may indeed very well happen to contradict myself; but truth, as Demades said, I do not contradict.

What a wonderful thing it is that drop of seed, from which we are produced, bears in itself the impressions, not only of the bodily shape, but of the thoughts and inclinations of our fathers!

The entire lower world was created in the likeness of the higher world. All that exists in the higher world appears like an image in this lower world; yet all this is but One.