“To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death... We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere."

“I speak the truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little more as I grow older.”

“To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.”

“Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.”

“Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness.”

“I find I am much prouder of the victory I obtain over myself, when, in the very ardor of dispute, I make myself submit to my adversary’s force of reason, than I am pleased with the victory I obtain over him through his weakness.”

“To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind for it.”

“If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.”

How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables for us?”

“I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.”

“Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.”

“Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.”

“Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.”

“There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.”

“I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.”

“Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.”

“Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.”

“If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.”

“If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.”

“He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.”

“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.”

“I quote others only in order the better to express myself.”

“I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.”

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”