All the glory of greatness has no lustre for people who are in search of understanding.

I have discovered that all man's unhappiness derives from only one source-not being able to sit quietly in a room.

Plurality which is not reduced to unity is confusion; unity which does not depend on plurality is tyranny.

The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it.

The strength of a man's virtue must not be measured by his efforts, but by his ordinary life.

Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man should have the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and because his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have none with him?

The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views.

Meanings receive their dignity from words instead of giving it to them.

The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first.

If the nose of Cleopatra had been a little shorter the whole face of the world would have changed.