What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.

Study has been for me the sovereign remedy against all the disappointments of life. I have never known any trouble that an hour's reading would not dissipate.

Knowledge humanizes mankind, and reason inclines to mildness; but prejudices eradicate every tender disposition.

In every government there are three sorts of power: the legislative; the executive in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive in regard to matters that depend on the civil law.

Fain would I glide down a gentle river, but I am carried away by a torrent.

Christians are beginning to lose the spirit of intolerance which animated them: experience has shown the error of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and of the persecution of those Christians in France whose belief differed a little from that of the king. They have realized that zeal for the advancement of religion is different from a due attachment to it; and that in order to love it and fulfil its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed to it.

It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.