“That is why Bias jested with those who were going through the perils of a great storm with him and calling on the gods for help: "Shut up," he said, "so that they do not realize that you are here with me.”

“This, reader, is an honest book...I want to appear in my simple, natural and everyday dress, without strain or artifice; for it is myself that I portray”

“There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.”

“It is an absolute perfection and virtually divine to know how to enjoy our being rightfully. We seek other conditions because we do not understand the use of our own, and go outside of ourselves because we do not know what it is like inside. Yet there is no use our mounting on stilts, for on stilts we must still walk on our own legs. And on the loftiest throne in the world we are still sitting only on our own rump.”

“The customs and practices of life in society sweep us along.”

“The ceaseless labor of your life is to build the house of death.”

“The pettiest and slightest nuisances are the most acute; and as small letters hurt and tire the eyes most, so do trifling matters sting us most.”

“Death is not one of our social managements; it is a scene with one character.”

“I never rebel so much against France as not to regard Paris with a friendly eye; she has had my heart since my childhood.... I love her tenderly, even to her warts and her spots. I am French only by this great city: the glory of France, and one of the noblest ornaments of the world.”

“To learn that we have said or done a foolish thing, that is nothing; we must learn that we are nothing but fools, a far broader and more important lesson.”

“Sorry the man, to my mind, who has not in his own home a place to be all by himself, to pay his court privately to himself, to hide!”

“In general I ask for books that make use of learning, not those that build it up.”

“If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God and a coward towards men.”

“We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.”

“Each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice.”

“The man who establishes his argument by noise and command knows that his reason is weak.”

“A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.”

“People try to get out of themselves and to escape from the man. This is folly; instead of transforming themselves into angels, they turn into beast; instead of lifting, they degrade themselves. These transcendental humors frighten me, like lofty and inaccessible heights.”

“The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to live to the point.”

“Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses.”

“We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe, we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.”

“We are all blockheads.”

“Such as are in immediate fear of a losing their estates, of banishment, or of slavery, live in perpetual anguish, and lose all appetite and repose; whereas such as are actually poor, slaves, or exiles, ofttimes live as merrily as other folk.”

“From books all I seek is to give myself pleasure by an honourable pastime: or if I do study, I seek only that branch of learning which deals with knowing myself and which teaches me how to live and die well...”