Quotations

I was born between eleven and twelve in the morning on the last day of February, 1533. It is now just fifteen days since I turned thirty-nine.

— Book I, Chapter 19

For dinner conversation, I prefer the pleasant and witty to the learned and grave; in bed, beauty over goodness; and in common discourse, the most capable speaker, whether they are sincere or not.

— Book III, Chapter 3

In a case like this, we need either a man of irreproachable integrity or someone so simple that he lacks the material to construct a lie—someone without the skill to make fiction sound like fact and who has no motive to deceive.

— Book I, Chapter 30

We have a mind that is flexible, that can keep itself company; it has the means to attack and to defend, to receive and to give: let us not fear, then, that in this solitude we will languish in uncomfortable emptiness.

— Book I, Chapter 38

Until you have made yourself into someone you are afraid to stumble in front of, and until you feel a sense of modesty and respect for yourself, let honorable images always be present to your mind.

— Book I, Chapter 38

And yet I am much deceived if many other writers deliver more worth noting regarding the subject matter, or—however well or poorly phrased—if any other writer has sown more material, or at all events more direct honesty, upon his paper than myself.

— Book I, Chapter 39

I dive in without planning or design; the first word begets the second, and so on until the end.

— Book I, Chapter 39

The letters of this age consist more of fine edges and prefaces than actual substance. Just as I would rather write two letters than fold and seal one (a task I always assign to someone else), I would gladly hand the letter over to another person once the real business is done, letting them add those long harangues, offers, and prayers we place at the bottom.

— Book I, Chapter 39

We can grasp virtue so tightly that it becomes a vice, if we embrace it too strictly and with too violent a desire.

— Book I, Chapter 29

If we truly understood the difference between the impossible and the unusual, and between what is contrary to the order and course of nature and what is merely contrary to the common opinion of men, we would neither believe too rashly nor be too skeptical.

— Book I, Chapter 26

If there were no lying on the hard ground, no enduring the blistering heat while fully armored, no eating the flesh of horses and donkeys, no seeing oneself hacked and cut to pieces, no enduring a bullet being pulled from among shattered bones, no stitching, cauterizing, and probing of wounds, by what means would the advantage we crave over the common crowd be acquired?

— Book I, Chapter 40

Just as an enemy becomes fiercer when we flee, pain grows arrogant when it sees us cower beneath it. It will surrender on much better terms to those who stand against it; a man must oppose and stoutly set himself against it. By retreating and giving ground, we invite and pull down upon ourselves the ruin that threatens us.

— Book I, Chapter 40