I believe that there never was a creator of a philosophical system who did not confess at the end of his life that he had wasted his time. It must be admitted that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men that the inventors of syllogisms. He who imagined a ship towers considerably above him who imagined innate ideas.

He who doesn't have the spirit of his time, has all its misery.

Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?

Why, since we are always complaining of our ills, are we constantly employed in redoubling them?

The secret of being a bore... is to tell everything.

You despise books; you whose lives are absorbed in the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure or indolence; but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.