A lover is a man who tries to be more amiable than it is possible for him to be.

Man may aspire to virtue, but he cannot reasonably aspire to truth.

At the sight of what goes on in the world, the most misanthropic of men must end by being amused, and Heraclitus must die laughing.

[Prudence] replaces [strength] by saving the man who has the misfortune of not possessing it from most occasions when it's needed.

Man reaches each stage of his life as a novice.

Woman's weakness, not man's merit, oftenest gains the suitor's victory.

In the library of the world men have hitherto been ranged according to the form, and the binding; the time is coming when they will take rank and order according to their contents and intrinsic merits.

In order to forgive reason for the evil it has wrought on the majority of men, we must imagine for ourselves what man would be without his reason. 'Tis a necessary evil.

Nature in causing reason and the passions to be born at one and the same time apparently wished by the latter gift to distract man from the evil she had done him by the former, and by only permitting him to live for a few years after the loss of his passions seems to show her pity by early deliverance from a life that reduces him to reason as his sole resource.