Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee.

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.

No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

Nothing prints more lively in our minds than something we wish to forget.

Observe, observe perpetually.

Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.

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.

Not because Socrates said so,... I look upon all men as my compatriots.

My appetite comes to me while eating.

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.

Saturninus said, "Comrades, you have lost a good captain to make him an ill general."

A little folly is desirable in him that will not be guilty of stupidity.

Habit is a second nature.

We seek and offer ourselves to be gulled.

The oldest and best known evil was ever more supportable than one that was new and untried.

What if he has borrowed the matter and spoiled the form, as it oft falls out?

I moreover affirm that our wisdom itself, and wisest consultations, for the most part commit themselves to the conduct of chance.

We are born to inquire after truth; it belongs to a greater power to possess it. It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of the deeps, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge.

T is so much to be a king, that he only is so by being so. The strange lustre that surrounds him conceals and shrouds him from us; our sight is there broken and dissipated, being stopped and filled by the prevailing light.

All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.

And to bring in a new word by the head and shoulders, they leave out the old one.

It happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

Few men have been admired by their own domestics.

I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little the more as I grow older.

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.

I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that ties them together.

An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.

Confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence. Variant: Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.

Courtesy is a science of the highest importance. It is, like grace and beauty in the body, which charm at first sight, and lead on to further intimacy and friendship, opening a door that we may derive instruction from the example of others, and at the same time enabling us to benefit them by our example, if there be anything in our character worthy of imitation.

Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil's alphabet- the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.

Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.

Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.

Ambition is not a vice of little people.

Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.

Amongst so many borrowed things, I am glad if I can steal one, disguising and altering it for some new service.

I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.

For truth itself has not the privilege to be spoken at all times and in all sorts.

The diversity of physical arguments and opinions embraces all sorts of methods.

I have ever loved to repose myself, whether sitting or lying, with my heels as high or higher than my head.

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

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

The mariner of old said to Neptune in a great tempest, "O God! thou mayest save me if thou wilt, and if thou wilt thou mayest destroy me; but whether or no, I will steer my rudder true."

How many worthy men have we seen survive their own reputation!

Apollo said that every one's true worship was that which he found in use in the place where he chanced to be.

He that I am reading seems always to have the most force.