“Ambition is not a vice of little people.”

It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.

The entire lower world was created in the likeness of the higher world. All that exists in the higher world appears like an image in this lower world; yet all this is but One.

No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.

We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

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.

Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.

I have often seen people uncivil by too much civility, and tiresome in their courtesy.

I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.

An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.

If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.

It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.

I quote others only in order the better to express myself.

Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.

Those who have compared our life to a dream were right… we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.

Confidence in others’ honesty is no light testimony of one’s own integrity.