The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage.

The spirit of commerce is frugality, economy, moderation, labor, ponderance, tranquillity, order, and rule. So long as this spirit subsides, the riches it produces have no bad effect. The mischief is when excessive wealth destroys the spirit of commerce, then it is that the conveniences of inequality... are felt.

Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.

Experience constantly proves that every man who has power is impelled to abuse it; he goes on till he is pulled up by some limits. Who would say it! virtue even has need of limits.

In vain do we seek tranquility in the desert; temptations are always with us; our passions, represented by the demons, never let us alone: those monsters created by the heart, those illusions produced by the mind, those vain specters that are our errors and our lies always appear before us to seduce us; they attack us even in our fasting or our mortifications, in other words, in our very strength.

A rational army would run away.

Men should be bewailed at their birth, and not at their death.