There is nothing more ancient than the truth.

Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.

For each of us there is a set limit to our intellectual powers which we cannot pass.

So far, I have been a spectator in this theater which is the world, but I am now about to mount the stage, and I come forward masked.

I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain.

Let whoever can do so deceive me, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I continue to think I am something.

I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovery.