WednesdayFeb 25, 2026
Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969
If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.
I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.
Not because Socrates said so, but because it is in truth my own disposition and perchance to some excess I look upon all men as my compatriots, and embrace a Pole as a Frenchman, making less account of the national than of the universal and common bond.
And one might therefore say of me that in this book I have only made up a bunch of other peoples flowers, and that of my own I have only provided the string that ties them together.
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.
When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me? When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me? When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not more of a pastime to her than she is to me?
We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.
I want death to find me planting my cabbages.
Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a flea, and yet he will be making gods by dozens. different translation Man is certainly crazy. He could not make a mite, and he makes gods by the dozen.
The thing I fear most is fear.
The man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.
I will follow the good side right to the fire but not into it if I can help it.
Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of ones own goodness.
A man may be humble through vainglory.
I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray.... I am myself the matter of my book.
It is good to rub and polish your mind against the minds of others.
It is more of a job to interpret the interpretations than to interpret the things, and there are more books about books than about any other subject: we do nothing but write glosses about each other.
Thus we should beware of clinging to vulgar opinions, and judge things by reason's way, not by popular say.
Only he can judge of matters great and high whose soul is likewise.
It takes so much to be a king that he exists only as such. That extraneous glare that surrounds him hides him and conceals him from us; our sight breaks and is dissipated by it being filled and arrested by this strong light.
We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.
Make use of life while you have it. Whether you have lived enough depends upon yourself, not on the number of your years.
The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them: a man may live long, yet get little from life. Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.
Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.
What of a truth that is bounded by these mountains and is falsehood to the world that lives beyond?
Malice sucks up the greater part of her own venom, and poisons herself.
Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgment on him.
A man must be a little mad if he does not want to be even more stupid.
Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside desperate to get out
Marriage may be compared to a cage: the birds outside frantic to get in and those inside frantic to get out.
It (marriage) happens as with cages; the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.
The mind is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not discreetly how to use it.
Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from nature itself.
My trade and my art is living.
Everyone recognizes me in my book, and my book in me.
The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mould.... The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbour causes a war betwixt princes.
The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.
A man is not hurt so much by what happens, as by his opinion of what happens.
There is nothing on which men are commonly more intent than on making a way for their opinions.
I quote others only the better to express myself.
To make a crooked stick straight, we bend it to the contrary way.
Saying is one thing and doing is another.
True it is that she who escapeth safe and unpolluted from out of the school of freedom, giveth more confidence of herself than she who cometh sound out of the school of severity and restraint.
Of all the infirmities we have, the most savage is to despise our being.
When all is summed up, a man never speaks of himself without loss; his accusations of himself are always believed; his praises never.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
A man of understanding has lost nothing, if he has himself.
A man must keep a little back shop where he can be himself without reserve. In solitude alone can he know true freedom.
We must reserve a back shop all our own entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.
I speak the truth, not my fill of it, but as much as I dare speak, and I dare to do so a little more as I grow old.
Their [the Skeptics'] way of speaking is: 'I settle nothing.... I do not understand it.... Nothing seems true that may not seem false.' Their sacramental word is ..., which is to say, I suspend my judgment.
Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.
For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in every way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits.
Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.
Virtue can have naught to do with ease.... It craves a steep and thorny path.
This notion [skepticism] is more clearly understood by asking 'What do I know?'
Our wisdom and deliberation for the most part follow the lead of chance.
Few men have been admired by their own households.
A noble farce, wherein kinds, republics, and emperors have for so many ages played their parts, and to which the whole vast universe serves for a theatre.
Are, at most, but inconsiderable props and appendages.
Let us a little permit Nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we.
The clearest sign of wisdom is continued cheerfulness.
Since I would rather make of him [the child] an able man than a learned man, I would also urge that care be taken to Choose a guide [tutor] with a well-made rather than a well-filled head.
Ambition is not a vice of little people.
He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.
There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.
There never were in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity.
Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.
I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that ties them together.
No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.
I find that the best goodness I have has some tincture of vice.
... there is nevertheless a certain respect, a general duty to humanity, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants. We owe justice to men, and graciousness and benignity to other creatures ... there is a certain commerce and mutual obligation betwixt them and us.
Lies Lying::'He who has not a good memory should never take upon himself the trade of lying.
After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to the spectacles of the slaughter of animals, they proceeded to those of the slaughter of men, to the gladiators.
Live as long as you please, you will strike nothing off the time you will have to spend dead.
I have seen no more evident monstrosity and miracle in the world than myself.
I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.
There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.
Those who have compared our life to a dream were right.... We sleeping wake and waking sleep.
The easy, gentle, and sloping path ... is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.
To philosophize is to doubt.
We have more poets than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one.
Since we cannot match it let us take our revenge by abusing it.
How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!
In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection, otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books.
He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.
It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.
How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables to us!
No matter that we may mount on stilts, we still must walk on our own legs. And on the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.
The most manifest sign of wisdom is continued cheerfulness.
Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known.
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