“Why do people respect the package rather than the man?”

“No wind favors he who has no destined port.”

“No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.”

“There is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others.”

“There is no desire more natural than the desire of knowledge. (Il n'est desir plus naturel que le desir de connaissance)”

“Kings and philosophers shit—and so do ladies.”

“Other people do not see you at all, but guess at you by uncertain conjectures.”

“If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.”

“Saying is one thing and doing is another”

“We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.”

“It is a disaster that wisdom forbids you to be satisfied with yourself and always sends you away dissatisfied and fearful, whereas stubbornness and foolhardiness fill their hosts with joy and assurance.”

“I want us to be doing things, prolonging life's duties as much as we can. I want death to find me planting my cabbages, neither worrying about it nor the unfinished gardening.”

“The thing I fear most is fear.”

“I enjoy books as misers enjoy treasures, because I know I can enjoy them whenever I please.”

“Life itself is neither a good nor an evil: life is where good or evil find a place, depending on how you make it for them.”

“Valor is strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul; it consists not in the worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own.”

“My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.”

“Life itself is neither a good nor an evil: life is where good or evil find a place, depending on how you make it for them.”

“Valor is strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul; it consists not in the worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own.”

“My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.”

“So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague field of imagination... And there is no mad or idle fancy that they do not bring forth in the agitation.”

“Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement.”

“Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.”

“Behold the hands, how they promise, conjure, appeal, menace, pray, supplicate, refuse, beckon, interrogate, admire, confess, cringe, instruct, command, mock and what not besides, with a variation and multiplication of variation which makes the tongue envious.”

“Kings and philosophers defecate, and so do ladies.”

“When I express my opinions it is so as to reveal the measure of my sight not the measure of the thing.”

“The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make to them; a man may live long, yet get little from life. Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will - Montaigne, Essays”

“The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness.”

“I had rather fashion my mind than furnish it.”

“If I am pressed to say why I loved him, I feel it can only be explained by replying: 'Because it was he; because it was me.”

“There are no truths, only moments of claryty passing for answers.”

“To distract myself from tiresome thoughts, I have only to resort to books; they easily draw my mind to themselves and away from other things.”

“Pride and curiosity are the two scourges of our souls. The latter prompts us to poke our noses into everything, and the former forbids us to leave anything unresolved and undecided.”

“The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to live with purpose.”

“a good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.”

“There is no more expensive thing than a free gift.”

“Let every foot have its own shoe.”

“One must be a little foolish if one does not want to be even more stupid.”

“The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.”

“Experience has further taught me this, that we ruin ourselves by impatience.”

“Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.”

“The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold. The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbor creates a war betwixt princes.”

“The soul in which philosophy dwells should by its health make even the body healthy. It should make its tranquillity and gladness shine out from within; should form in its own mold the outward demeanor, and consequently arm it with a graceful pride, an active and joyous bearing, and a contented and good-natured countenance. The surest sign of wisdom is constant cheerfulness.”

“Democritus and Heraclitus were two philosophers, of whom the first, finding the condition of man vain and ridiculous, never went out in public but with a mocking and laughing face; whereas Heraclitus, having pity and compassion on this same condition of ours, wore a face perpetually sad, and eyes filled with tears.

I prefer the first humor; not because it is pleasanter to laugh than to weep, but because it is more disdainful, and condemns us more than the other; and it seems to me that we can never be despised as much as we deserve. Pity and commiseration are mingled with some esteem for the thing we pity; the things we laugh at we consider worthless. I do not think there is as much unhappiness in us as vanity, nor as much malice as stupidity. We are not so full of evil as of inanity; we are not as wretched as we are worthless.

“Man (in good earnest) is a marvellous vain, fickle, and unstable subject, and on whom it is very hard to form any certain and uniform judgment.”

“Certainly, if he still has himself, a man of understanding has lost nothing.”

“Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.”

“And therefore, Reader, I myself am the subject of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivolous and so vain.

“Writing does not cause misery, it is born of misery.”