"Is it not a noble farce, wherein kings, republics, and emperors have for so many ages played their parts, and to which the whole vast universe serves for a theatre?"

"Saying is one thing, doing another."

"I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice."

"One may be humble out of pride."

"The mariner of old said to Neptune in a great tempest, "O God! thou mayest save me if thou wilt, and if thou wilt thou mayest destroy me; but whether or no, I will steer my rudder true.""

"How many worthy men have we seen survive their own reputation!"

"Apollo said that every one's true worship was that which he found in use in the place where he chanced to be."

"He that I am reading seems always to have the most force."

"Arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are formed and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing, as bears leisurely lick their cubs into form."

"Why may not a goose say thus: "All the parts of the universe I have an interest in: the earth serves me to walk upon, the sun to light me; the stars have their influence upon me; I have such an advantage by the winds and such by the waters; there is nothing that yon heavenly roof looks upon so favourably as me. I am the darling of Nature! Is it not man that keeps and serves me?""

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

"The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mould…. The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbour causes a war betwixt princes."

"'T is one and the same Nature that rolls on her course, and whoever has sufficiently considered the present state of things might certainly conclude as to both the future and the past."

"When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me?"

"Some impose upon the world that they believe that which they do not; others, more in number, make themselves believe that they believe, not being able to penetrate into what it is to believe."

"There is, nevertheless, a certain respect and a general duty of humanity that ties us, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants."

"She [virtue] requires a rough and stormy passage; she will have either outward difficulties to wrestle with, ... or internal difficulties."

"The only good histories are those that have been written by the persons themselves who commanded in the affairs whereof they write."

"The middle sort of historians (of which the most part are) spoil all; they will chew our meat for us."

"To which we may add this other Aristotelian consideration, that he who confers a benefit on any one loves him better than he is beloved by him again."

"And not to serve for a table-talk."

"For a desperate disease a desperate cure."

"Plato says, "'Tis to no purpose for a sober man to knock at the door of the Muses;" and Aristotle says "that no excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of folly.""

"In this present that God has made us, there is nothing unworthy our care; we stand accountable for it even to a hair; and is it not a commission to man, to conduct man according to his condition; 'tis express, plain, and the very principal one, and the Creator has seriously and strictly prescribed it to us. Authority has power only to work in regard to matters of common judgment, and is of more weight in a foreign language; therefore let us again charge at it in this place"

"It would be better to have no laws at all than to have them in such profusion as we do."

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

"Si, avons nous beau monter sur des échasses, car sur des échasses encore faut-il marcher de nos jambes. Et au plus élevé trône du monde, si ne sommes assis que sur notre cul."

"He who remembers the evils he has undergone, and those that have threatened him, and the slight causes that have changed him from one state to another, prepares himself in that way for future changes and for recognizing his condition. The life of Caesar has no more to show us than our own; an emperor's or an ordinary man's, it is still a life subject to all human accidents."

"For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in every way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits."

"It is more of a job to interpret the interpretations than to interpret the things, and there are more books about books than about any other subject: we do nothing but write glosses about each other."

"There is no wish more natural than the wish to know."

"God never sends evils"

"‘Tis a good word and a profitable desire, but withal absurd; for to make the handle bigger than the hand, the cubic longer than the arm, and to hope to stride further than our legs can reach, is both impossible and monstrous; or that man should rise above himself and humanity; for he cannot see but with his eyes, nor seize but with his hold. He shall be exalted, if God will lend him an extraordinary hand; he shall exalt himself, by abandoning and renouncing his own proper means, and by suffering himself to be raised and elevated by means purely celestial. It belongs to our Christian faith, and not to the stoical virtue, to pretend to that divine and miraculous metamorphosis."

"J'ai seulement fait ici un amas de fleurs étrangères, n'y ayant fourni du mien que le filet à les lier."

"I have seen no more evident monstrosity and miracle in the world than myself."

"Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself."

"At the very beginning of my fevers and sicknesses that cast me down, whilst still entire, and but little, disordered in health, I reconcile myself to Almighty God by the last Christian, offices, and find myself by so doing less oppressed and more easy, and have got, methinks, so much the better of my disease. And I have yet less need of a notary or counsellor than of a physician."

"A man must be a little mad if he does not want to be even more stupid."

"Il n'est si homme de bien, qu'il mette à l'examen des loix toutes ses actions et pensées, qui ne soit pendable dix fois en sa vie."

"Not because Socrates said so, but because it is in truth my own disposition — and perchance to some excess — I look upon all men as my compatriots, and embrace a Pole as a Frenchman, making less account of the national than of the universal and common bond."

"It (marriage) happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out."

"Non pudeat dicere, quod non pudet sentire: "Let no man be ashamed to speak what he is not ashamed to think.""

"Malice sucks up the greatest part of its own venom, and poisons itself."

"For my own part, I may desire in general to be other than I am; I may condemn and dislike my whole form, and beg of Almighty God for an entire reformation, and that He will please to pardon my natural infirmity: but I ought not to call this repentance, methinks, no more than the being dissatisfied that I am not an angel or Cato. My actions are regular, and conformable to what I am and to my condition; I can do no better; and repentance does not properly touch things that are not in our power; sorrow does.. I imagine an infinite number of natures more elevated and regular than mine; and yet I do not for all that improve my faculties, no more than my arm or will grow more strong and vigorous for conceiving those of another to be so."

"Chaque homme porte la forme, entière de l'humaîne condition."

"Few men have been admired by their own households."