Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.
Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.
Childhood is the sleep of reason.
I only see clearly what I remember.
Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.
Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.
The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it.
Force does not constitute right... obedience is due only to legitimate powers.
I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.
Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.
Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it.
Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.
It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.
The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.
To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.
I have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described.
I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.
Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?
Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.
We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.