Man is quite insane. He wouldn’t know how to create a maggot, and he creates gods by the dozen.

Man is the sole animal whose nudities offend his own companions, and the only one who, in his natural actions, withdraws and hides himself from his own kind.

Man, in good earnest, is a marvelous vain, fickle, and unstable subject, and on whom it is very hard to form any certain and uniform judgment.

Men ... are not agreed about any one thing, not even that heaven is over our heads.

Most men are rich in borrowed sufficiency: a man may very well say a good thing, give a good answer, cite a good sentence, without at all seeing the force of either the one or the other.

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

My trade and art is to live,.

Nature has presented us with a large faculty of entertaining ourselves alone; and often calls us to it, to teach us that we owe ourselves in part to society, but chiefly and mostly to ourselves.

Nature has, herself, I fear, imprinted in man a kind of instinct to inhumanity.

'Nature is a gentle guide, but not more sweet and gentle than prudent and just.