I would like to suggest that our minds are swamped by too much study and by too much matter just as plants are swamped by too much water or lamps by too much oil; that our minds, held fast and encumbered by so many diverse preoccupations, may well lose the means of struggling free, remaining bowed and bent under the load; except that it is quite otherwise: the more our souls are filled, the more they expand; examples drawn from far-off times show, on the contrary, that great soldiers ad statesmen were also great scholars.
It is an absolute perfection and virtually divine to know how to enjoy our being rightfully.
God defend me from myself.
If others surpass you in knowledge, in charm, in strength, in fortune, you have other causes to blame for it; but if you yield tothem in stoutness of heart you have only yourself to blame.
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.
A man should think less of what he eats and more with whom he eats because no food is so satisfying as good company.
It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness. A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength.
All the opinions in the world point out that pleasure is our aim.
Getting married is very much like going to a restaurant with friends. You order what you want then when you see what the other person has, you wish you had ordered that.
I listen with attention to the judgment of all men; but so far as I can remember, I have followed none but my own.
Marriage has, for its share, usefulness, justice, honour, and constancy; a stale but more durable pleasure. Love is grounded on pleasure alone, and it is indeed more gratifying to the senses, keener and more acute; a pleasure stirred and kept alive by difficulties. There must be a sting and a smart in it. It ceases to be love if it has no shafts and no fire.
Fortune, to show us her power in all things, and to abate our presumption, seeing she could not make fools wise, has made them fortunate.
I must use these great men's virtues as a cloak for my weakness.
There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.
A straight oar looks bent in the water. It matters not merely that we see a thing, but how we see it.
To philosophize is to learn to die.
The first law that ever God gave to man was a law of pure obedience; it was a commandment naked and simple, wherein man had nothing to inquire after, or to dispute, forasmuch as to obey is the proper office of a rational soul, acknowledging a heavenly superior and benefactor. From obedience and submission spring all other virtues, as all sin does from self-opinion.
One may be humble out of pride.
Friendship is a creature formed for a companionship not for a herd.
Among the liberal arts, let us begin with the art that liberates us.
O human creature,you are the investigator without knowledge, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and all in all, the fool of the farce.
He who lives not to others, lives little to himself.
Malice sucks up the greatest part of its own venom, and poisons itself.
Amongst all other vices there is none I hate more than cruelty, both by nature and judgment, as the extremest of all vices.
An honest man is not accountable for the vice and folly of his trade, and therefore ought not to refuse the exercise of it. It is the custom of his country, and there is profit in it. We must live by the world, and such as we find it, so make use of it.
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