A good man may make the best even of poverty and disease, and the other ills of life; but he can only attain happiness under the opposite conditions

Character is determined by choice, not opinion.

One would have thought that it was even more necessary to limit population than property; and that the limit should be fixed by calculating the chances of mortality in the children, and of sterility in married persons. The neglect of this subject, which in existing states is so common, is a never-failing cause of poverty among the citizens; and poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

Men must be able to engage in business and go to war, but leisure and peace are better; they must do what is necessary and indeed what is useful, but what is honorable is better. On such principles children and persons of every age which requires education should be trained.

It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.

A thing chosen always as an end and never as a means we call absolutely final. Now happiness above all else appears to be absolutely final in this sense, since we always choose it for its own sake and never as a means to something else.

But nature flies from the infinite; for the infinite is imperfect, and nature always seeks an end.