I seek in books only to give myself pleasure by honest amusement; or if I study, I seek only the learning that treats of the knowledge of myself and instructs me in how to die well and live well.
He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.
Our speech has its weaknesses and its defects, like all the rest. Most of the occasions for the troubles of the world are grammatical.
Necessity reconciles and brings men together; and this accidental connection afterward forms itself into laws.
There is the name and the thing; the name is a sound which sets a mark on and denotes the thing. The name is no part of the thing nor of the substance; it is an extraneous piece added to the thing, and outside of it.
The most unhappy and frail creatures are men and yet they are the proudest.
Everything must not always be said, for that would be folly.
Wisdom has its excesses, and has no less need of moderation than folly.
Were I to live my life over again, I should live it just as I have done. I neither complain of the past, nor do I fear the future.
It is much more easy to accuse the one sex than to excuse the other.
Rash and incessant scolding runs into custom and renders itself despised.
What kind of truth is it which has these mountains as its boundary and is a lie beyond them?
A tutor should not be continually thundering instruction into the ears of his pupil, as if he were pouring it through a funnel, but, after having put the lad, like a young horse, on a trot, before him, to observe his paces, and see what he is able to perform, should, according to the extent of his capacity, induce him to taste, to distinguish, and to find out things for himself; sometimes opening the way, at other times leaving it for him to open; and by abating or increasing his own pace, accommodate his precepts to the capacity of his pupil.
Experience teaches that a strong memory is generally joined to a weak judgment.
Few men are admired by their servants.
[I]n my country, when they would say a man has no sense, they say, such an one has no memory; and when I complain of the defect of mine, they do not believe me, and reprove me, as though I accused myself for a fool: not discerning the difference betwixt memory and understanding, which is to make matters still worse for me. But they do me wrong; for experience, rather, daily shows us, on the contrary, that a strong memory is commonly coupled with infirm judgment.
Oh, a friend! How true is that old saying, that the enjoyment of one is sweeter and more necessary than that of the elements of water and fire!
Authors communicate with the people by some special extrinsic mark; I am the first to do so by my entire being, as Michel de Montaigne.
Example is a bright looking-glass, universal and for all shapes to look into.
We are all of us richer than we think we are.
Intoxication is calculated to put heart into the elderly and give them delight in dancing.
Our skin is provided as adequately as theirs with endurance against the assaults of the weather: witness so many nations who have not yet tried the use of any clothes. Our ancient Gauls wore hardly any clothes; nor do the Irish, our neighbors, under so cold a sky.
Princes give mee sufficiently, if they take nothing from me, and doe me much good, if they doe me no hurt: it is all I require of them.
Habit is second nature.
But sure there is need of other remedies than dreaming, a weak contention of art against nature.
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