“If you don’t know how to die, don’t worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately.”

There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.

There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.

A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.

The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.

Ambition is not a vice of little people.

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.

Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.

Stubborn and ardent clinging to one’s opinion is the best proof of stupidity.

It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.

We can be knowledgable with other men’s knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men’s wisdom.

The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre.

There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.

How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.

Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think.

In my view, the great and complicated things that go on in the world cannot be adequately recognized by people who do not use every possible aid to understanding.

Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.

What happens is that we have a very limited and narrow view of our self interest and do not adequately weight the price that has to be paid on the other side for any of these measures we are promoting.