“Le monde n’est qu’une balançoire perpétuelle. Toutes choses y balancent sans cesse.”

“La plus grande chose du monde, c'est de savoir être à soi.”

“Combien de choses nous servoyent hier d’articles de foy, qui nous sont fables aujourd’huy?How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables for us?”

“There is no desire more natural than the desire of knowledge. (Il n'est desir plus naturel que le desir de connaissance)”

“La foiblesse de nostre condition, fait que les choses en leur simplicité et pureté naturelle ne puissent pas tomber en nostre usage...Nostre extreme volupté a quelque air de gemissement, et de plainte.”

“If anyone gets intoxicated with his knowledge when he looks beneath him, let him turn his eyes upward toward past ages, and he will lower his horns, finding there so many thousands of minds that trample him underfoot. If he gets into some flattering presumption about his valor, let him remember the lives of the two Scipios, so many armies, so many nations, all of whom leave him so far behind them. No particular quality will make a man proud who balances it against the many weaknesses and imperfections that are also in him, and, in the end, against the nullity of man’s estate.”

“I have never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself.”