The Infinite Library

“The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it.”

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”

“Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook and a good digestion.”

“Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.”

“Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.”

“Childhood is the sleep of reason.”

“I hate books; they teach us only to talk about what we do not know.”

“We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.”

“Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?”

“No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.”

“Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older.”

“Base souls have no faith in great individuals.”

“I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.”

“Being wealthy isn't just a question of having lots of money. It's a question of what we want. Wealth isn't an absolute, it's relative to desire. Every time we seek something that we can't afford, we can be counted as poor, how much money we may actually have.”

“I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.”

“Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.”

“Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.”

“The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.”

“Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it.”

“To live is not to breathe but to act. It is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the sentiment of our existence. The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years but he who has most felt life.”

“Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.”

“Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.”

“Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.”

“The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.”

“Little privations are easily endured when the heart is better treated than the body.”

“When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.”

“I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.”

“To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.”

“It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.”

“We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man's estate, is the gift of education.”

“Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.”

“Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.”

“Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape a fire is guilty of suicide?”

“Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.”

“All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.”

“Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.”

“Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.”

“The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.”

“I have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described.”

“It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.”

“God made me and broke the mold.”

“How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?”

“Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.”

“Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.”

“It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.”

“You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.”

“Force does not constitute right... obedience is due only to legitimate powers.”

“I only see clearly what I remember.”