Friendship is a contract in which we render small services in expectation of big ones.

There are bad examples which are worse than crimes; and more states have perished from the violation of morality than from the violation of law.

If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman... because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.

We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our school-masters, and one from the world. The third contradicts all that the first two teach us.

Virtue has needs of limits.

The Ottoman Empire whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.

When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.