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

[The Pope] will make the king believe that three are only one, that the bread he eats is not bread... and a thousand other things of the same kind.

Never create by law what can be accomplished by morality.

A fondness for reading changes the inevitable dull hours of our life into exquisite hours of delight.

When a government is arrived to that degree of corruption as to be incapable of reforming itself, it would not lose much by being new moulded.

The alms given to a naked man in the street do not fulfil the obligations of the state, which owes to every citizen a certain subsistence, a proper nourishment, convenient clothing, and a kind of life not incompatible with health.

I should like to abolish funerals; the time to mourn a person is at his birth, not his death.