The most excellent and divine counsel, the best and most profitable advertisement of all others, but the least practiced, is to study and learn how to know ourselves. This is the foundation of wisdom and the highway to whatever is good.

Wise men mingle mirth with their cares, as a help either to forget or overcome them; but to resort to intoxication for the ease of one’s mind is to cure melancholy by madness.

The advice of friends must be received with a judicious reserve; we must not give ourselves up to it and follow it blindly, whether right or wrong.

It is certainly much easier wholly to decline a passion than to keep it within just bounds and measures; and that which few can moderate almost anybody may prevent.

Wise men mingle mirth with their cares, as a help either to forget or overcome them; but to resort to intoxication for the ease of one's mind is to cure melancholy by madness.

All religions are pieced together out of elements which seem so at odds with reason that any intelligence laughs at them.

The proper Science and Subject for Man's Contemplation is Man himself. [Fr., La vraie science et le vrai etude de l'homme c'est l'homme.]

To owe an obligation to a worthy friend is a happiness, and can be no disparagement.

Mutability is the badge of infirmity. It is seldom that a man continues to wish and design the same thing two days alike. Now he is for marrying; and now a mistress is preferred to a wife. Now he is ambitious and aspiring; presently the meanest servant is not more humble than he. This hour he squanders his money away; the next he turns miser. Sometimes he is frugal and serious; at other times profuse, airy, and gay.

The true science and study of mankind is man.