“We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.”
“Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous.”
“When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.”
“If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.”
“We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.”
“I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.”
“I see men ordinarily more eager to discover a reason for things than to find out whether the things are so.”
“There is no course of life so weak and Scottish as that which is ordered by orders, method, and discipline.”
“There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.”
“I tell the truth, not as much as I would like to, but as much as I dare. I dare more and more as I grow older.”
“Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside desperate to get out.”
“In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.”
“No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living, but that ten times in his life he might not lawfully be hanged.”
“For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.”
“The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.”
“It should be noted that children's games are not merely games. One should regard them as their most serious activities.”
“The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.”
“I care not so much what I am in the opinion of others, as what I am in my own; I would be rich of myself and not by borrowing.”
“The same reason that makes us chide and brawl and fall out with any of our neighbors, causeth a war to follow between Princes.”
“There never was in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains. The most universal quality is diversity.”
“Princes give me sufficiently if they take nothing from me, and do me much good if they do me no hurt; it is all I require of them.”
“If a man urge me to tell wherefore I loved him, I feel it cannot be expressed but by answering: Because it was he, because it was myself.”
“There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.”
“It happens as one sees in cages: the birds who are outside despair of ever getting in, and those within are equally desirous of getting out”
“The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.”
“In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection, otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books.”
“Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.”
“I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.”
“When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books, They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.”
“Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.”