Quote collection
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"A wellborn mind that is practiced in dealing with people makes itself thoroughly agreeable by itself. Art is nothing else but thelist and record of the productions of such minds."
"I, who am king of the matter I treat, and who owe an accounting for it to no one, do not for all that believe myself in all I write. I often hazard sallies of my mind which I mistrust."
"This very Rome that we behold deserves our love ...: the only common and universal city."
"The religion of my doctor or my lawyer cannot matter. That consideration has nothing in common with the functions of the friendship they owe me."
"The dispersing and scattering our names into many mouths, we call making them more great."
"He who falls obstinate in his courage, if he falls he fights from his knees."
"God is favorable to those whom he makes to die by degrees; 'tis the only benefit of old age. The last death will be so much the less painful: it will kill but a quarter of a man or but half a one at most."
"It is a stupid presumption to go about despising and condemning as false anything that seems to us improbable; this is a common fault in those who think they have more intelligence than the crowd."
"A man never speaks of himself without losing something. What he says in his disfavor is always beleived, but when he commends himself, he arouses mistrust."
"He that had never seen a river, imagined the first he met with to be the sea."
"I see this evident, that we willingly accord to piety only the services that flatter our passions."
"Lawyers and physicians are an ill provision for any country."
"Books are a languid pleasure."
"We are more solicitous that men speak of us, than how they speak."
"If these Essays were worthy of being judged, it might fall out, in my opinion, that they would not find much favour, either with common and vulgar minds, or with uncommon and eminent ones: the former would not find enough in them, the latter would find too much; they might manage to live somewhere in the middle region."
"The judgment is an utensil proper for all subjects, and will have an oar in everything."
"Long life, and short, are by death made all one; for there is no long, nor short, to things that are no more."
"Learning is not to be tacked to the mind, but we must fuse and blend them together, not merely giving the mind a slight tincture, but a thorough and perfect dye. And if we perceive no evident change and improvement, it would be better to leave it alone; learning is a dangerous weapon, and apt to wound its master if it be wielded by a feeble hand, and by one not well acquainted with its use."
"For there is no air that men so greedily draw in, that diffuses itself so soon, and that penetrates so deep as that of license."
"Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents."