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Lying Is A Disgraceful Vice, And One That Plutarch Paints In Most Disgraceful Colors, When He Says That It Is "affording Testimony That One First Despises God, And Then Fears Men." It Is Not Possible More Happily To Describe Its Horrible, Disgusting, And Abandoned Nature; For Can We Imagine Anything More Vile Than To Be Cowards With Regard To Men, And Brave With Regard To God.

-Michel De Montaigne

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Lying Is A Disgraceful

Michel De Montaigne

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Lying Is A Disgraceful Vice, And One That Plutarch Paints In Most Disgraceful Colors, When He Says That It Is "affording Testimony That One First Despises God, And Then Fears Men." It Is Not Possible More Happily To Describe Its Horrible, Disgusting, And Abandoned Nature; For Can We Imagine Anything More Vile Than To Be Cowards With Regard To Men, And Brave With Regard To God.

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I, Who Am King Of The Matter I Treat, And Who Owe An Accounting For It To No One, Do Not For All That Believe Myself In All I Write. I Often Hazard Sallies Of My Mind Which I Mistrust.

Our Own Peculiar Human Condition Is That We Are As Fit To Be Laughed At As Able To Laugh.

Marriage, A Market Which Has Nothing Free But The Entrance.

Report Followeth Not All Goodness, Except Difficulty And Rarity Be Joined Thereto.

For All Parts Of The Body That We See Fit To Expose To The Wind And Air Are Found Fit To Endure It: Face, Feet, Hands, Legs, Shoulders, Head, According As Custom Invites Us. For If There Is A Part Of Us That Is Tender And That Seems As Though It Should Fear The Cold, It Should Be The Stomach, Where Digestion Takes Place; Our Fathers Left It Uncovered, And Our Ladies, Soft And Delicate As They Are, Sometimes Go Half Bare Down To The Navel.

If Virtue Cannot Shine Bright, But By The Conflict Of Contrary Appetites, Shall We Then Say That She Cannot Subsist Without The Assistance Of Vice, And That It Is From Her That She Derives Her Reputation And Honor?

To Compose Our Character Is Our Duty, Not To Compose Books, And To Win, Not Battles And Provinces, But Order And Tranquility In Our Conduct. Our Great And Glorious Masterpiece Is To Live Appropriately. All Other Things, Ruling, Hoarding, Building, Are Only Little Appendages And Props, At Most.

In True Friendship, In Which I Am Expert, I Give Myself To My Friend More Than I Draw Him To Me. I Not Only Like Doing Him Good Better Than Having Him Do Me Good, But Also Would Rather Have Him Do Good To Himself Than To Me; He Does Me Most Good When He Does Himself Good.

The Laws Of Conscience, Though We Ascribe Them To Nature, Actually Come From Custom.

Most Pleasures Embrace Us But To Strangle.

We Cannot Be Held To What Is Beyond Our Strength And Means; For At Times The Accomplishment And Execution May Not Be In Our Power, And Indeed There Is Nothing Really In Our Own Power Except The Will: On This Are Necessarily Based And Founded All The Principles That Regulate The Duty Of Man.

Nobody Is Exempt From Saying Stupid Things, The Harm Is To Do It Presumptuously.

I Give My Opinion Not As Being Good, But As Being My Own.

The Honor Of The Conquest Is Rated By The Difficulty.

Nature Has Made Us A Present Of A Broad Capacity For Entertaining Ourselves Apart, And Often Calls Us To Do So, To Teach Us That We Owe Ourselves In Part To Society, But In The Best Part To Ourselves.

To Philosophize Is Nothing Else Than To Prepare Oneself For Death.

Learning Must Not Only Lodge With Us: We Must Marry Her.

He That I Am Reading Seems Always To Have The Most Force.

When Socrates, After Being Relieved Of His Irons, Felt The Relish Of The Itching That Their Weight Had Caused In His Legs, He Rejoiced To Consider The Close Alliance Between Pain And Pleasure.

To Make Judgements About Great And Lofty Things, A Soul Of The Same Stature Is Needed; Otherwise We Ascribe To Them That Vice Which Is Our Own.

The Archer Who Overshoots His Mark Does No Better Than He Who Falls Short Of It.

Man Is The Sole Animal Whose Nudities Offend His Own Companions, And The Only One Who, In His Natural Actions, Withdraws And Hides Himself From His Own Kind.

Nature Has, Herself, I Fear, Imprinted In Man A Kind Of Instinct To Inhumanity.

We Are All Of Us Richer Than We Think We Are; But We Are Taught To Borrow And To Beg, And Brought Up More To Make Use Of What Is Another's Than Of Our Own.

We Perceive No Charms That Are Not Sharpened, Puffed Out, And Inflated By Artifice. Those Which Glide Along Naturally And Simply Easily Escape A Sight So Gross As Ours.

There Is No Greater Enemy To Those Who Would Please Than Expectation.

The Premeditation Of Death Is The Premeditation Of Liberty; He Who Has Learnt To Die Has Forgot To Serve.

How Many Worthy Men Have We Known To Survive Their Own Reputation, Who Have Seen And Suffered The Honor And Glory Most Justly Acquired In Their Youth, Extinguished In Their Own Presence?

Fie On The Eloquence That Leaves Us Craving Itself, Not Things!

Let [children] Be Able To Do All Things, And Love To Do Only The Good.

Our Skin Is Provided As Adequately As Theirs With Endurance Against The Assaults Of The Weather: Witness So Many Nations Who Have Not Yet Tried The Use Of Any Clothes. Our Ancient Gauls Wore Hardly Any Clothes; Nor Do The Irish, Our Neighbors, Under So Cold A Sky.

The Memory Represents To Us Not What We Choose But What It Pleases.

Judgement Can Do Without Knowledge: But Not Knowledge Without Judgement.

I Care Not So Much What I Am To Others As What I Am To Myself. I Will Be Rich By Myself, And Not By Borrowing.

We Every Day And Every Hour Say Things Of Another That We Might More Properly Say Of Ourselves, Could We But Apply Our Observations To Our Own Concerns.

I Do Not Portray The Thing In Itself. I Portray The Passage; Not A Passing From One Age To Another, Or, As The People Put It, From Seven Years To Seven Years, But From Day To Day, From Minute To Minute.

He Who Fears He Will Suffer, Already Suffers From His Fear.

I Am Afraid That Our Eyes Are Bigger Than Our Stomachs, And That We Have More Curiosity Than Understanding. We Grasp At Everything, But Catch Nothing Except Wind.

The World Always Looks Straights Ahead; As For Me, I Turn My Gaze Inward, I Fix It There And Keep It Busy. Everyone Looks In Front Of Him: As For Me, I Look Inside Me: I Have No Business But With Myself; I Continually Observe Myself, I Take Stock Of Myself, I Taste Myself. Others...they Always Go Forward; As For Me, I Roll About In Myself.

I Look Upon The Too Good Opinion That Man Has Of Himself, As The Nursing Mother Of All False Opinions, Both Public And Private.

I Prefer The Company Of Peasants Because They Have Not Been Educated Sufficiently To Reason Incorrectly.

Virtue Can Have Naught To Do With Ease. . . . It Craves A Steep And Thorny Path.

It Is Not A Mind, It Is Not A Body That We Educate, But It Is A Man, And We Must Not Make Two Parts Of Him.

I Do Not Believe, From What I Have Been Told About This People, That There Is Anything Barbarous Or Savage About Them, Except That We All Call Barbarous Anything That Is Contrary To Our Own Habits.

There Is No So Wretched And Coarse A Soul Wherein Some Particular Faculty Is Not Seen To Shine.

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.

Now There Cannot Be First Principles For Men, Unless The Divinity Has Revealed Them; All The Rest--beginning, Middle, And End--isnothing But Dreams And Smoke.

It Is A Sign Of Contraction Of The Mind When It Is Content, Or Of Weariness.

Human Wisdom Makes As Ill Use Of Her Talent When She Exercises It In Rescinding From The Number And Sweetness Of Those Pleasures That Are Naturally Our Due, As She Employs It Favorably And Well In Artificially Disguising And Tricking Out The Ills Of Life To Alleviate The Sense Of Them.

Amongst So Many Borrowed Things, Am Glad If I Can Steal One, Disguising And Altering It For Some New Service.

Friendship Is A Creature Formed For A Companionship Not For A Herd.

When I Play With My Cat, Who Knows Whether I Do Not Make Her More Sport Than She Makes Me?

The Easy, Gentle, And Sloping Path . . . Is Not The Path Of True Virtue. It Demands A Rough And Thorny Road.

Nothing Prints More Lively In Our Minds Than Something We Wish To Forget.

Nothing Else But An Insatiate Thirst Of Enjoying A Greedily Desired Object.

Vexations May Be Petty, But They Are Vexations Still.

All Permanent Decisions Are Made In A Temporary State Of Mind.

Few Men Are Admired By Their Servants.

Great Authors, When They Write About Causes, Adduce Not Only Those They Think Are True But Also Those They Do Not Believe In, Provided They Have Some Originality And Beauty. They Speak Truly And Usefully Enough If They Speak Ingeniously.

Saying Is One Thing And Doing Is Another

When I Am Attached By Gloomy Thoughts, Nothing Helps Me So Much As Running To My Books. They Quickly Absorb Me And Banish The Clouds From My Mind.

All General Judgments Are Loose And Imperfect

The Dispersing And Scattering Our Names Into Many Mouths, We Call Making Them More Great.

Thus We Should Beware Of Clinging To Vulgar Opinions, And Judge Things By Reason's Way, Not By Popular Say.

For Table-talk, I Prefer The Pleasant And Witty Before The Learned And The Grave; In Bed, Beauty Before Goodness.

O Human Creature,you Are The Investigator Without Knowledge, The Magistrate Without Jurisdiction, And All In All, The Fool Of The Farce.

Every Other Knowledge Is Harmful To Him Who Does Not Have Knowledge Of Goodness.

If Others Examined Themselves Attentively, As I Do, They Would Find Themselves, As I Do, Full Of Inanity And Nonsense. Get Rid Of It I Cannot Without Getting Rid Of Myself.

We Are Nearer Neighbors To Ourselves Than The Whiteness Of Snow Or The Weight Of Stones Are To Us: If Man Does Not Know Himself, How Should He Know His Functions And Powers?

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.

Order A Purge For Your Brain, It Will There Be Much Better Employed Than Upon Your Stomach.

Fortune, Seeing That She Could Not Make Fools Wise, Has Made Them Lucky.

Intelligence Is Required To Be Able To Know That A Man Knows Not.

There Is A Huge Gulf Between The Man Who Follows The Conventions And Laws Of His Country And The Man Who Sets Out To Regiment Them And To Change Them.

Whatever Is Preached To Us, And Whatever We Learn, We Should Still Remember That It Is Man That Gives, And Man That Receives; It Is A Mortal Hand That Presents It To Us, It Is A Mortal Hand That Accepts It.

Beauty Is The True Prerogative Of Women, And So Peculiarly Their Own, That Our Sex, Though Naturally Requiring Another Sort Of Feature, Is Never In Its Lustre But When Puerile And Beardless, Confused And Mixed With Theirs.

There Is No Doubt That Greek And Latin Are Great And Handsome Ornaments, But We Buy Them Too Dear.

Wise People Are Foolish If They Cannot Adapt To Foolish People.

Valor Is Stability, Not Of Legs And Arms, But Of Courage And The Soul.

I Have Seen People Rude By Being Over-polite.

It Is A Stupid Presumption To Go About Despising And Condemning As False Anything That Seems To Us Improbable; This Is A Common Fault In Those Who Think They Have More Intelligence Than The Crowd.

We Have The Pleasures Suitable To Our Lot; Let Us Not Usurp Those Of Greatness. Ours Are More Natural And All The More Solid And Sure For Being Humbler. Since We Will Not Do So Out Of Conscience, At Least Out Of Ambition Let Us Reject Ambition.

Ambition Is, Of All Other, The Most Contrary Humor To Solitude; And Glory And Repose Are So Inconsistent That They Cannot Possibly Inhabit One And The Same Place; And For So Much As I Understand, Those Have Only Their Arms And Legs Disengaged From The Crowd, Their Mind And Intention Remain Engaged Behind More Than Ever.

Though We May Be Learned By Another's Knowledge, We Can Never Be Wise But By Our Own Experience.

Laws Are Maintained In Credit, Not Because They Are Essentially Just, But Because They Are Laws. It Is The Mystical Foundation Of Their Authority; They Have None Other.

When We Have Got It, We Want Something Else.

The Bitterness Of The Potion, And The Abhorrence Of The Patient Are Necessary Circumstances To The Operation. It Must Be Something To Trouble And Disturb The Stomach That Must Purge And Cure It.

It Takes Strong Ears Indeed To Hear Ourselves Judged Frankly, And Because There Are Few Who Can Endure Criticism Without Being Stung By It, Those Who Venture To Criticize Us Perform A Remarkable Act Of Friendship. For It Is A Healthy Love That Will Risk Wounding Or Offending In Order To Profer A Benefit.

Man Will Rise, If God By Exception Lends Him A Hand; He Will Rise By Abandoning And Renouncing His Own Means, And Letting Himselfbe Raised And Uplifted By Purely Celestial Means.

I Listen With Attention To The Judgment Of All Men; But So Far As I Can Remember, I Have Followed None But My Own.

Our Speech Has Its Weaknesses And Its Defects, Like All The Rest. Most Of The Occasions For The Troubles Of The World Are Grammatical.

The Recognition Of Virtue Is Not Less Valuable From The Lips Of The Man Who Hates It, Since Truth Forces Him To Acknowledge It; And Though He May Be Unwilling To Take It Into His Inmost Soul, He At Least Decks Himself Out In Its Trappings.

Malice Sucks Up The Greatest Part Of Its Own Venom, And Poisons Itself.

..a Man May Live Long, Yet Live Very Little. Satisfaction In Life Depends Not On The Number Of Your Years, But On Your Will.

Satisfaction In Life

The Daughter-in-law Of Pythagoras Said That A Woman Who Goes To Bed With A Man Ought To Lay Aside Her Modesty With Her Skirt, And Put It On Again With Her Petticoat

The Most Unhappy And Frail Creatures Are Men And Yet They Are The Proudest.

There Is More Ado To Interpret Interpretations Than To Interpret Things, And More Books Upon Books Than Upon Any Other Subject; We Do Nothing But Comment Upon One Another. Every Place Swarms With Commentaries; Of Authors There Is Great Scarcity.

The Finest Souls Are Those That Have The Most Variety And Suppleness.

Nothing Fixes A Thing So Intensely In The Memory As The Wish To Forget It.

It Is Not Reasonable That Art Should Win The Place Of Honor Over Our Great And Powerful Mother Nature. We Have So Overloaded The Beauty And Richness Of Her Works By Our Inventions That We Have Quite Smothered Her.

A Liar Would Be Brave Toward God, While He Is A Coward Toward Men; For A Lie Faces God, And Shrinks From Man.

Speaking Is Half His That Speaks, And Half His That Hears.

It Is Not Without Good Reason, That He Who Has Not A Good Memory Should Never Take Upon Him The Trade Of Lying.

No Doctor Takes Pleasure In The Health Even Of His Friends.

Long Life, And Short, Are By Death Made All One; For There Is No Long, Nor Short, To Things That Are No More.

There Is The Name And The Thing; The Name Is A Sound Which Sets A Mark On And Denotes The Thing. The Name Is No Part Of The Thing Nor Of The Substance; It Is An Extraneous Piece Added To The Thing, And Outside Of It.

I Do Not Understand; I Pause; I Examine.

Don't Discuss Yourself, For You Are Bound To Lose; If You Belittle Yourself, You Are Believed; If You Praise Yourself, You Are Disbelieved.

Seneca's Virtue Shows Forth So Live And Vigorous In His Writings, And The Defense Is So Clear There Against Some Of These Imputations, As That Of His Wealth And Excessive Spending, That I Would Not Believe Any Testimony To The Contrary.

God Defend Me From Being An Honest Man According To The Description Which Every Day I See Made By Each Man To His Own Glorification

The Shortest Way To Arrive At Glory Should Be To Do That For Conscience Which We Do For Glory. And The Virtue Of Alexander Appears To Me With Much Less Vigor In His Theater Than That Of Socrates In His Mean And Obscure. I Can Easily Conceive Socrates In The Place Of Alexander, But Alexander In That Of Socrates I Cannot.

The Common Notions That We Find In Credit Around Us And Infused Into Our Souls By Our Fathers' Seed, These Seem To Be The Universal And Natural Ones. Whence It Comes To Pass That What Is Off The Hinges Of Custom, People Believe To Be Off The Hinges Of Reason.

Tis So Much To Be A King, That He Only Is So By Being So.

Every One Is Well Or Ill At Ease, According As He Finds Himself! Not He Whom The World Believes, But He Who Believes Himself To Be So, Is Content; And In Him Alone Belief Gives Itself Being And Reality

We Should Be Similarly Wary Of Accepting Common Opinions; We Should Judge Them By The Ways Of Reason Not By Popular Vote.

Wine Is The Benevolent God, Who Gives Back Gaiety To Men And Restores Youth To The Old.

To Behave Rightly, We Ourselves Should Never Lay A Hand On Our Servants As Long As Our Anger Lasts. Things Will Seem Different To Us When We Have Quieted And Cooled Down.

I Have Never Seen A Greater Monster Or Miracle In The World Than Myself.

What Of A Truth That Is Bounded By These Mountains And Is Falsehood To The World That Lives Beyond?

It Is In The Enjoyment And Not In Mere Possession That Makes For Happiness.

Things Seem Greater By Imagination Than They Are In Effect.

The Customs And Practices Of Life In Society Sweep Us Along.

How Many Things We Held Yesterday As Articles Of Faith Which Today We Tell As Fables.

It Is A Small Soul, Buried Beneath The Weight Of Affairs, That Does Not Know How To Get Clean Away From Them, That Cannot Put Them Aside And Pick Them Up Again.

Socrates Thought And So Do I That The Wisest Theory About The Gods Is No Theory At All.

As For Me, Then, I Love Life And Cultivate It Just As God Has Been Pleased To Grant It To Us.

If My Mind Could Gain A Firm Footing, I Would Not Make Essays, I Would Make Decisions; But It Is Always In Apprenticeship And On Trial.

All I Say Is By Way Of Discourse, And Nothing By Way Of Advice. I Should Not Speak So Boldly If It Were My Due To Be Believed.

A Man Must Learn To Endure Patiently What He Cannot Avoid Conveniently.

If These Essays Were Worthy Of Being Judged, It Might Fall Out, In My Opinion, That They Would Not Find Much Favour, Either With Common And Vulgar Minds, Or With Uncommon And Eminent Ones: The Former Would Not Find Enough In Them, The Latter Would Find Too Much; They Might Manage To Live Somewhere In The Middle Region.

If You Don't Know How To Die, Don't Worry; Nature Will Tell You What To Do On The Spot, Fully And Adequately. She Will Do This Job Perfectly For You; Don't Bother Your Head About It.

Laws Gain Their Authority From Actual Possession And Custom: It Is Perilous To Go Back To Their Origins; Laws, Like Our Rivers, Get Greater And Nobler As They Roll Along: Follow Them Back Upstream To Their Sources And All You Find Is A Tiny Spring, Hardly Recognizable; As Time Goes By It Swells With Pride And Grows In Strength.

People Of Our Time Are So Formed For Agitation And Ostentation That Goodness, Moderation, Equability, Constancy, And Such Quiet And Obscure Qualities Are No Longer Felt.

The Value Of Life Lies Not In The Length Of Days, But In The Use We Make Of Them... Whether You Find Satisfaction In Life Depends Not On Your Tale Of Years, But On Your Will.

Satisfaction In Life

If Not For That Of Conscience, Yet At Least For Ambition's Sake, Let Us Reject Ambition, Let Us Disdain That Thirst Of Honor And Renown, So Low And Mendicant; That It Makes Us Beg It Of All Sorts Of People.

I Seek In Books Only To Give Myself Pleasure By Honest Amusement; Or If I Study, I Seek Only The Learning That Treats Of The Knowledge Of Myself And Instructs Me In How To Die Well And Live Well.

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.

Man In Sooth Is A Marvellous, Vain, Fickle, And Unstable Subject.

It Would Be Better To Have No Laws At All, Than To Have Too Many.

There Is A Certain Amount Of Purpose, Acquiescence, And Satisfaction In Nursing One's Melancholy.

We Cannot Fail In Following Nature.

It Is Fear That I Stand Most In Fear Of, In Sharpness It Exceeds Every Other Feeling.

Life In Itself Is Neither Good Nor Evil, It Is The Place Of Good And Evil, According To What You Make It.

Law Of Attraction

Take Care That Old Age Does Not Wrinkle Your Spirit Even More Than Your Face.

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.

Perhaps It Is Not Without Reason That We Attribute Facility In Belief And Conviction To Simplicity And Ignorance; For It Seems To Me I Once Learned That Belief Was Sort Of An Impression Made On Our Mind, And That The Softer It Is The Less Resistant T.

Make Use Of Life While You Have It. Whether You Have Lived Enough Depends Upon Yourself, Not On The Number Of Your Years.

Whatever Is Enforced By Command Is More Imputed To Him Who Exacts Than To Him Who Performs.

Live As Long As You Please, You Will Strike Nothing Off The Time You Will Have To Spend Dead.

The Soul Which Has No Fixed Purpose In Life Is Lost; To Be Everywhere, Is To Be Nowhere.

Lost Friendship

Have You Been Able To Think Out And Manage Your Own Life? You Have Done The Greatest Task Of All.... All Other Things, Ruling, Hoarding, Building, Are Only Little Appendages And Props, At Most.

Custom Is A Violent And Treacherous School Mistress. She, By Little And Lithe, Slyly And Unperceived, Slips In The Foot Of Her Authority; But Having By This Gentle And Humble Beginning, With The Benefit Of Time, Fixed And Established It, She Then Unmasks A Furious And Tyrannic Countenance, Against Which We Have No More The Courage Or The Power So Much As To Lift Up Our Eyes.

Whenever A New Finding Is Reported To The World People Say - It Is Probably Not True. Later On, When The Reliability Of A New Finding Has Been Fully Confirmed, People Say - Ok, It May Be True But It Has No Real Significance. At Last, When Even The Significance Of The Finding Is Obvious To Everybody, People Say - Well, It Might Have Some Significance, But The Idea Is Not New.

Not Being Able To Govern Events, I Govern Myself.

Law Of Attraction

How Many Valiant Men We Have Seen To Survive Their Own Reputation!

The Whole Idea We Have For Their Chastity Is Ridiculous. They Would Have To Become Numb And Invisible To Please Us. I Don't Know Whether The Exploits Of Alexander And Caesar Really Surpass The Resolution Of A Beautiful Young Woman, Bred Up In The Light And Commerce Of Our Society, Who Still Keeps Herself Whole. There Is No Doing So Hard As Not Doing.

Now, Since Everything Else Is Furnished With The Exact Amount Of Needle And Thread Required To Maintain Its Being, It Is In Truth Incredible That We Alone Should Be Brought Into The World In A Defective And Indigent State, In A State Such That We Cannot Maintain Ourselves Without External Aid.

The Share We Have In The Knowledge Of Truth, Such As It Is, Has Not Been Acquired By Our Own Powers. God Has Taught Ushis Wonderful Secrets; Our Faith Is Not Of Our Acquiring, It Is Purely The Gift Of Another's Bounty.

It's Not Victory If It Doesn't End The War.

Marriage Is Like A Cage; One Sees The Birds Outside Desperate To Get In, And Those Inside Equally Desperate To Get Out.

We Are All Of Us Richer Than We Think We Are.

That Is Why Bias Jested With Those Who Were Going Through The Perils Of A Great Storm With Him And Calling On The Gods For Help: "shut Up," He Said, "so That They Do Not Realize That You Are Here With Me.

Men Do Not Know The Natural Infirmity Of Their Mind: It Does Nothing But Ferret And Quest, And Keeps Incessantly Whirling Around, Building Up And Becoming Entangled In Its Own Work, Like Silkworms, And Is Suffocated In It. A Mouse In A Pitch Barrel...thinks It Notices From A Distance Some Sort Of Glimmer Of Imaginary Light And Truth; But While Running Toward It, It Is Crossed By So Many Difficulties And Obstacles, And Diverted By So Many New Quests, That It Strays From The Road, Bewildered.

It Is Not Necessity But Abundance Which Produces Greed.

We Are Born To Inquire Into Truth; It Belongs To A Greater To Possess It

One Open Way Of Speaking Introduces Another Open Way Of Speaking, And Draws Out Discoveries, Like Wine And Love.

The Corruption Of The Age Is Made Up By The Particular Contribution Of Every Individual Man; Some Contribute Treachery, Others Injustice, Atheism, Tyranny, Avarice, Cruelty, According To Their Power.

And Therefore, Reader, I Myself Am The Subject Of My Book: It Is Not Reasonable That You Should Employ Your Leisure On A Topic So Frivolous And So Vain. Therefore, Farewell.

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.

A Wise Man Sees As Much As He Ought, Not As Much As He Can.

Confidence In Others' Honesty Is No Light Testimony Of One's Own Integrity.

In General I Ask For Books That Make Use Of Learning, Not Those That Build It Up.

Traveling Through The World Produces A Marvelous Clarity In The Judgment Of Men. We Are All Of Us Confined And Enclosed Within Ourselves, And See No Farther Than The End Of Our Nose. This Great World Is A Mirror Where We Must See Ourselves In Order To Know Ourselves. There Are So Many Different Tempers, So Many Different Points Of View, Judgments, Opinions, Laws And Customs To Teach Us To Judge Wisely On Our Own, And To Teach Our Judgment To Recognize Its Imperfection And Natural Weakness.

The World Is But A School Of Inquisition; It Is Not Who Shall Enter The Ring, But Who Shall Run The Best Courses.

We Are Never Present With, But Always Beyond Ourselves; Fear, Desire, Hope, Still Push Us On Toward The Future.

We Feel A Kind Of Bittersweet Pricking Of Malicious Delight In Contemplating The Misfortunes Of Others.

Since We Cannot Attain Unto It, Let Us Revenge Ourselves By Railing At It; And Yet It Is Not Absolutely Railing Against Anything, To Proclaim Its Defects, Because They Are In All Things To Be Found, How Beautiful Or How Much To Be Coveted Soever.

I Want Death To Find Me Planting My Cabbages.

One Man May Have Some Special Knowledge At First-hand About The Character Of A River Or A Spring, Who Otherwise Knows Only What Everyone Else Knows. Yet To Give Currency To This Shred Of Information, He Will Undertake To Write On The Whole Science Of Physics. From This Fault Many Great Troubles Spring.

Decency, Not To Dare To Do That In Public Which It Is Decent Enough To Do In Private.

I Love Those Historians That Are Either Very Simple Or Most Excellent. Such As Are Between Both (which Is The Most Common Fashion), It Is They That Spoil All; They Will Needs Chew Our Meat For Us And Take Upon Them A Law To Judge, And By Consequence To Square And Incline The Story According To Their Fantasy.

There Are Some Defeats More Triumphant Than Victories.

Oh Senseless Man, Who Cannot Possibly Make A Worm Or A Flea And Yet Will Create Gods By The Dozen!

The Conduct Of Our Lives Is The True Mirror Of Our Doctrine.

Behold The Hands, How They Promise, Conjure, Appeal, Menace, Pray, Supplicate, Refuse, Beckon, Interrogate, Admire, Confess, Cringe, Instruct, Command, Mock And What Not Besides, With A Variation And Multiplication Of Variation Which Makes The Tongue Envious.

It Is A Disaster That Wisdom Forbids You To Be Satisfied With Yourself And Always Sends You Away Dissatisfied And Fearful, Whereas Stubbornness And Foolhardiness Fill Their Hosts With Joy And Assurance.

It Is Very Easy To Accuse A Government Of Imperfection, For All Mortal Things Are Full Of It.

Fame And Tranquility Can Never Be Bedfellows.

I Must Use These Great Men's Virtues As A Cloak For My Weakness.

Love Is Like Playing The Piano. First You Must Learn To Play By The Rules, Then You Must Forget The Rules And Play From Your Heart. If I Were Pressed To Say Why I Loved Him, I Feel That My Only Reply Could Be: Because It Was He, Because It Was I.

The Profit We Possess After Study Is To Have Become Better And Wiser.

It Is The Part Of Cowardliness, And Not Of Virtue, To Seek To Squat Itself In Some Hollow Lurking Hole, Or To Hide Herself Under Some Massive Tomb, Thereby To Shun The Strokes Of Fortune.

Truly Man Is A Marvelously Vain, Diverse, And Undulating Object. It Is Hard To Found Any Constant And Uniform Judgment On Him.

I Must Accommodate My History To The Hour: I May Presently Change, Not Only By Fortune, But Also By Intention.

A Man Should Not So Much Respect What He Eats, As With Whom He Eats.

Not Being Able To Govern Events, I Govern Myself, And Apply Myself To Them If They Will Not Apply Themselves To Me.

Indeed, There Is No Such Thing As An Altogether Ugly Woman — Or Altogether Beautiful.

The First Distinction Among Men, And The First Consideration That Gave One Precedence Over Another, Was Doubtless The Advantage Of Beauty.

It Is A Dangerous And Fateful Presumption, Besides The Absurd Temerity That It Implies, To Disdain What We Do Not Comprehend. For After You Have Established, According To Your Fine Undertstanding, The Limits Of Truth And Falsehood, And It Turns Out That You Must Necessarily Believe Things Even Stranger Than Those You Deny, You Are Obliged From Then On To Abandon These Limits.

He Who Establishes His Argument By Noise And Command Shows That His Reason Is Weak.

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