You scholars, you're in communication with the devil.

What would you not have accomplished if you had been free?" "Possibly nothing at all; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect. Compression is needed to explode gunpowder. Captivity has brought my mental faculties to a focus; and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced — from electricity, lightning, from lightning, illumination.

You who are in power have only the means that money produces — we who are in expectation, have those which devotion prompts.

Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.

I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper than of a sword or pistol.

It is the infirmity of our nature always to believe ourselves much more unhappy than those who groan by our sides!

Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory and the second philosophy