Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.
Judgement can do without knowledge: but not knowledge without judgement.
A little of everything and nothing thoroughly, after the French fashion.
We are born to inquire into truth; it belongs to a greater to possess it
I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.
In love, 'tis no other than frantic desire for that which flies from us.
A little folly is desirable in him that will not be guilty of stupidity.
Who does not in some sort live to others, does not live much to himself.
Our wisdom and deliberation for the most part follow the lead of chance.
On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.
There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.
Every place swarms with commentaries; of authors there is great scarcity.
Nothing prints more lively in our minds than something we wish to forget.
He who does not live in some degree for others, hardly lives for himself.
Man is forming thousands of ridiculous relations between himself and God.
Rash and incessant scolding runs into custom and renders itself despised.
All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not honesty and good-nature
The greater part of the world's troubles are due to questions of grammar.
I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.
In plain Truth, it is no Want, but rather Abundance that creates Avarice.
One must be a little foolish if one does not want to be even more stupid.
Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.
Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
When I quote others I do so in order to express my own ideas more clearly.
We should rather examine, who is better learned, than who is more learned.
He who is not sure of his memory, should not undertake the trade of lying.
The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.
To honor him whom we have made is far from honoring him that hath made us.
We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there.
It is in the enjoyment and not in mere possession that makes for happiness.
Nothing else but an insatiate thirst of enjoying a greedily desired object.
The most unhappy and frail creatures are men and yet they are the proudest.
Scratching is one of nature's sweetest gratifications, and nearest at hand.
There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.
Confidence in others' honesty is no light testimony of one's own integrity.
And obstinacy is the sister of constancy, at least in vigour and stability.
Tis the taste of effeminacy that disrelishes ordinary and accustomed things.
It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness.
Give me the provisions and whole apparatus of a kitchen, and I would starve.
He who falls obstinate in his courage, if he falls he fights from his knees.
The worth of the mind consisteth not in going high, but in marching orderly.
What fear has once made me will, I am bound still to will when without fear.
Repentance is but a denying of our will, and an opposition of our fantasies.
Certainly, if he still has himself, a man of understanding has lost nothing.
Experience has further taught me this, that we ruin ourselves by impatience.
Lying is a terrible vice, it testifies that one despises God, but fears men.
A man is not hurt so much by what happens, as by his opinion of what happens.
We are Christians by the same title as we are natives of Perigord or Germany.
Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.
He that had never seen a river, imagined the first he met with to be the sea.