The aim of all solitude...is the same: to live more at leisure and at one's ease. But people do not always look for the right way. Often they think they have left business, and they have only changed it. There is scarcely less trouble in governing a family than in governing an entire state: whatever the mind is wrapped up in, it is all wrapped up in it, and domestic occupations are no less importunate for being less important.

Furthermore, by getting rid of the court and the marketplace we do not get rid of the principal worries of our life... Ambition, avarice, irresolution, fear and lust do not leave us when we change our country... They often follow us even into the cloisters and schools of philosophy. Neither deserts, nor rocky caves, nor hair shirts, nor fasting will free us of them.