A person has two passions for love and abhorrence. A big disposition to excessiveness has just a love, because it is more ardent and stronger.

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

The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once.

I was convinced that our beliefs are based much more on custom and example than on any certain knowledge.

The principal use of prudence, of self-control, is that it teaches us to be masters of our passions, and to so control and guide them that the evils which they cause are quite bearable, and that we even derive joy from them all.

Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.

For I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that the effort to instruct myself had no effect other than th eincreasing discovery of my own ignorance