Essays (Essais) Quotes

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

“On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.”

“To philosophize is to learn how to die.”

“What do I know? (Que sais-je?)”

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”

“Je ne dis les autres, sinon pour d'autant plus me dire.”

“Ambition is not a vice of little people.”

“For a desperate disease a desperate cure.”

“We seek and offer ourselves to be gulled.”

“Every rich man is avaricious, in my opinion.”

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

“Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.”

“An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.”

“Few men have been admired by their own domestics.”

“Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.”

“Whatever can be done another day can be done today.”

“A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.”

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

“A man must either imitate the vicious or hate them.”

“Words repeated again have as another sound, so another sense.”

“Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.”

“Celuy ayme peu qui ayme à la mesure. He loves little who loves by rule.”

“No one is exempt from talking nonsense; the misfortune is to do it solemnly.”

“All wisdom is folly that does not accommodate itself to the common ignorance.”

“Even opinion is of force enough to make itself to be espoused at the expense of life.”

“The Cannibals and savage people do not so much offend me with roasting and eating of dead bodies, as those which torment and persecute the living.”

“Arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are found and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing, as bears leisurely lick their cubs into shape.”

“My very own Plutarch – so perfect, so outstanding a judge of human actions.”