“A man with nothing to lend should refrain from borrowing.”

“I myself am more ready to distort a fine saying in order to patch it on to me than to distort the thread of my argument to go in search of one. [A]”

“The contradictions of judgments, then, neither offend nor alter, they only rouse and exercise me. We evade correction, whereas we ought to offer and present ourselves to it, especially when it appears in the form of conference, and not of authority.”

“In truth, knowledge is a great and very useful quality; those who despise it give evidence enough of their stupidity. Yet I do not set its value at that extreme measure that some attribute to it, such as the philosopher Herillus, who find in it the sovereign good and think it has the power to make us wise and happy.”

“If only talking to oneself did not look mad, no day would go by without my being heard growling to myself. - you silly shit!”

“A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.”

“Those who shake the State are easily the first to be engulfed in its destruction. The fruits of dissension are not gathered by the one who began it: he stirs and troubles the waters for other men to fish in.”

“Difficulty is a coin which the learned conjure with so as not to reveal the vanity of their studies and which human stupidity is keen to accept in payment”

“To obey is the proper office of a rational soul.”

“The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but in walking orderly; its grandeur does not exercise itself in grandeur, but in mediocrity.”

“that it was an advantage to him to be interrupted in speaking, and that his adversaries were afraid to nettle him, lest his anger should redouble his eloquence.”

“The usefulness of living lies not in duration but in what you make of it. Some have lived long and lived little. See to it while you are still here. Whether you have lived enough depends not on a count of years but on your will.”

“No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living, but that ten times

“I do not think that there is so much wretchedness in us as vanity; we are not so much wicked as daft; we are not so much full of evil as of inanity; we are not so much pitiful as despicable.”

“No one is exempt from talking nonsense; the misfortune is to do it solemnly”

“Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgement on him."

“I know not what quintessence of all this mixture, which, seizing my whole will, carried it to plunge and lose itself in his, and that having seized his whole will, brought it back with equal concurrence and appetite to plunge and lose itself in mine.”

“No one is exempt from speaking nonsense. The great misfortune is to do it solemnly.”

“To expect to be kissed having bad breath is the secret of a fool.”

“From what you didn’t say, lies that you did say.”

“To keep the air fresh among words is the secret of verbal cleanliness.”

“Devil and God – two sides of the same face.”

“In every sound, the hidden silence sleeps.”

“If emptiness is empty, how can something be borne or awaken from it?”