A small number of choice books are sufficient.

He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really is dead.

But nothing is more estimable than a physician who, having studied nature from his youth, knows the properties of the human body, the diseases which assail it, the remedies which will benefit it, exercises his art with caution, and pays equal attention to the rich and the poor.

We must cultivate our own garden.

If one does not reflect, one thinks oneself master of everything; but when one does reflect, one realizes that one is master of nothing.

It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.

This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.