Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous.
Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.
Ambition is not a vice of little people.
When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.
He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.
No profession or occupation is more pleasing than the military; a profession or exercise both noble in execution (for the strongest, most generous and proudest of all virtues is true valor) and noble in its cause. No utility either more just or universal than the protection of the repose or defense of the greatness of one's country. The company and daily conversation of so many noble, young and active men cannot but be well-pleasing to you.
I consider myself an average man, except in the fact that I consider myself an average man.
The beauty of stature is the only beauty of men.
How many things served us but yesterday as articles of faith, which today we deem but fables?
Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.
Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.
Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think.
An unattempted lady could not vaunt of her chastity.
The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.
The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.
For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.
It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.
There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.
The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.
The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.
Confidence in another person's virtue is no light evidence of your own.
In my opinion, the most fruitful and natural play of the mind is in conversation. I find it sweeter than any other action in life; and if I were forced to choose, I think I would rather lose my sight than my hearing and voice. The study of books is a drowsy and feeble exercise which does not warm you up.
There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.
The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.
Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it.
The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.
I want death to find me planting my cabbage
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. My advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
It is not death that alarms me, but dying.
If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it.
Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.
There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.
But sure there is need of other remedies than dreaming, a weak contention of art against nature.
We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.
In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk -- they are all part of the curriculum.
Example is a bright looking-glass, universal and for all shapes to look into.
All the fame you should look for in life is to have lived it quietly.
There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.
There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
The thing I fear most is fear.
I know what I am fleeing from, but not what I am in search of.
There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.
Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.
If a man urge me to tell wherefore I loved him, I feel it cannot be expressed but by answering: Because it was he, because it was myself.
Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.
No wind favors him who has no destined port.
No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.
To honor him whom we have made is far from honoring him that hath made us..
It is very easy to accuse a government of imperfection, for all mortal things are full of it.
It is not the want, but rather abundance that creates avarice.
Habit is second nature.
The smallest annoyances, disturb us the most.
I love those historians that are either very simple or most excellent. Such as are between both (which is the most common fashion), it is they that spoil all; they will needs chew our meat for us and take upon them a law to judge, and by consequence to square and incline the story according to their fantasy.
My home...It is my retreat and resting place from wars, I try to keep this corner as a haven against the tempest outside, as I do another corner in my soul.
No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living, but that ten times in his life he might not lawfully be hanged.
Man is stark mad; he cannot make a flea, and yet he will be making gods by the dozens.
The weeping of an heir is laughter in disguise.
The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it.
It is a common seen by experience that excellent memories do often accompany weak judgments.
We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.
I see men ordinarily more eager to discover a reason for things than to find out whether the things are so.
It would be better to have no laws at all, than to have too many.
It should be noted that children's games are not merely games. One should regard them as their most serious activities.
Who does not in some sort live to others, does not live much to himself.
I do myself a greater injury in lying that I do him of whom I tell a lie.
He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying.
In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.
Lying is a terrible vice, it testifies that one despises God, but fears men.
My art and profession is to live.
The finest lives in my opinion are the common model, without miracle and without extravagance.
The word is half his that speaks, and half his that hears it.
We cannot do without it, and yet we disgrace and vilify the same. It may be compared to a cage, the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair to get out.
Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside desperate to get out.
If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
I was not long since in a company where I was not who of my fraternity brought news of a kind of pills, by true account, composed of a hundred and odd several ingredients; whereat we laughed very heartily, and made ourselves good sport; for what rock so hard were able to resist the shock or withstand the force of so thick and numerous a battery?
The memory represents to us not what we choose but what it pleases.
He who has not a good memory should never take upon himself the trade of lying.
It is much more easy to accuse the one sex than to excuse the other.
The most unhappy and frail creatures are men and yet they are the proudest.
I have never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself.
My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.
Taking it all in all, I find it is more trouble to watch after money than to get it.
Let Nature have her way; she understands her business better than we do.
There never was in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains. The most universal quality is diversity.
I care not so much what I am in the opinion of others, as what I am in my own; I would be rich of myself and not by borrowing.
It happens as one sees in cages: the birds who are outside despair of ever getting in, and those within are equally desirous of getting out
There is no course of life so weak and Scottish as that which is ordered by orders, method, and discipline.
Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.
Philosophy is doubt.
Scratching is one of nature's sweetest gratifications, and the one nearest at hand.
I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.
It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one.
Once you have decided to keep a certain pile, it is no longer yours; for you can't spend it.
A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.
Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of the mind is irreparable.
There are few men who dare to publish to the world the prayers they make to Almighty God.
The worthiest man to be known, and for a pattern to be presented to the world, he is the man of whom we have most certain knowledge. He hath been declared and enlightened by the most clear-seeing men that ever were; the testimonies we have of him are in faithfulness and sufficiency most admirable.
We endeavor more that men should speak of us, than how and what they speak, and it sufficeth us that our name run in men's mouths, in what manner soever. It stemma that to be known is in some sort to have life and continuance in other men's keeping.
The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.
The great and glorious masterpiece of man is how to live with purpose.
The same reason that makes us chide and brawl and fall out with any of our neighbors, causeth a war to follow between Princes.
I quote others in order to better express myself.
I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
Have you known how to take rest? You have done more than he who hath taken empires and cities.
Oh senseless man, who cannot possibly make a worm, and yet will make Gods by dozens.
One may disavow and disclaim vices that surprise us, and whereto our passions transport us; but those which by long habits are rooted in a strong and powerful will are not subject to contradiction. Repentance is but a denying of our will, and an opposition of our fantasies.
Princes give me sufficiently if they take nothing from me, and do me much good if they do me no hurt; it is all I require of them.
Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.
True it is that she who escapeth safe and unpolluted from out the school of freedom, giveth more confidence of herself than she who comet sound out of the school of severity and restraint.
Of all the infirmities we have, the most savage is to despise our being.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be self-sufficient.
Few men have been admired of their familiars.
He who lives not to others, lives little to himself.
After mature deliberation of counsel, the good Queen to establish a rule and immutable example unto all posterity, for the moderation and required modesty in a lawful marriage, ordained the number of six times a day as a lawful, necessary and competent limit.
Obstinacy is the sister of constancy, at least in vigor and stability.
My reason is not framed to bend or stoop: my knees are.
Even on the most exalted throne in the world we are only sitting on our own bottom.
Who feareth to suffer suffereth already, because he feareth.
It is the part of cowardliness, and not of virtue, to seek to squat itself in some hollow lurking hole, or to hide herself under some massive tomb, thereby to shun the strokes of fortune.
In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection, otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books.
Socrates thought and so do I that the wisest theory about the gods is no theory at all.
When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books, They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.
A man should ever be ready booted to take his journey.
I tell the truth, not as much as I would like to, but as much as I dare. I dare more and more as I grow older.
Those things that are dearest to us have cost us the most.
The honor of the conquest is rated by the difficulty.
There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.
Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.
Virtue craves a steep and thorny path.
Of all the benefits which virtue confers on us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest.
From Obedience and submission comes all our virtues, and all sin is comes from self-opinion.
Wise people are foolish if they cannot adapt to foolish people.
We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.
Wisdom hath her excesses, and no less need of moderation than folly.
All the world knows me in my book, and may book in me.