Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous.

Argument

He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.

Belief

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.

Chastity

An unattempted lady could not vaunt of her chastity.

Communication

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.

Confidence

Confidence in another person's virtue is no light evidence of your own.

Critics and Criticism

Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it.

Death and Dying

I want death to find me planting my cabbage

Discipline

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.

Example

Example is a bright looking-glass, universal and for all shapes to look into.

Fear

I know what I am fleeing from, but not what I am in search of.

Friends and Friendship

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.

God

To honor him whom we have made is far from honoring him that hath made us..

Habit

Habit is second nature.

Honesty

No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living, but that ten times in his life he might not lawfully be hanged.

Judgment and Judges

We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.

Leisure

It should be noted that children's games are not merely games. One should regard them as their most serious activities.

Lies and Lying

In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.

Who does not in some sort live to others, does not live much to himself.

Life and Living

My art and profession is to live.

Marriage

We cannot do without it, and yet we disgrace and vilify the same. It may be compared to a cage, the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair to get out.

Memory

The memory represents to us not what we choose but what it pleases.

Misfortunes

My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.

Opinions

There never was in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains. The most universal quality is diversity.

Philosophers and Philosophy

Philosophy is doubt.

Possessions

Once you have decided to keep a certain pile, it is no longer yours; for you can't spend it.

Quarrels

The same reason that makes us chide and brawl and fall out with any of our neighbors, causeth a war to follow between Princes.

Satisfaction

Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.

Self-confidence

True it is that she who escapeth safe and unpolluted from out the school of freedom, giveth more confidence of herself than she who comet sound out of the school of severity and restraint.

Service

He who lives not to others, lives little to himself.

Success

Even on the most exalted throne in the world we are only sitting on our own bottom.

Theory

Socrates thought and so do I that the wisest theory about the gods is no theory at all.

Thoughts and Thinking

When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books, They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.

Travel and Tourism

A man should ever be ready booted to take his journey.

Virtue

Of all the benefits which virtue confers on us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest.

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.

Writers and Writing

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