If you would be holy, instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you.

Religious wars are not caused by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance... the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human reason.

Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.

Men in excess of happiness or misery are equally inclined to severity. Witness conquerors and monks! It is mediocrity alone, and a mixture of prosperous and adverse fortune that inspire us with lenity and pity.

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

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

There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.