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

Politics are a smooth file, which cuts gradually, and attains its end by slow progression.

Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their laws: the Deity His laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws.

When a government lasts a long while, it deteriorates by insensible degrees. Republics end through luxury, monarchies through poverty.

There have never been so many civil wars as in the Kingdom of Christ.

I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should seem a fool, but be wise.

The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.