When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws.

If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier that other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are. you are comparing your lot with an ideal which is of course better and therefore you feel worse

The love of study is in us the only lasting passion. All the others quit us in proportion as this miserable machine which holds them approaches its ruins.

Passion makes us feel, but never see clearly.

Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.

...when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can only come from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost.

There is still another inconvenieney in conquests made by democracies; their government is ever odious to the conquered states. It is apparently monarchical, but in reality it is more oppressive than monarchy, as the experience of all ages and countries evinces.