Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness.

I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.

Oh, how empty is praise when it reflects back to its origin!

Better it is to say that the government most comfortable to nature is that which best agrees with the humor and disposition of the people in whose favor it is established.

When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it and avarice possesses the whole community.

The less luxury there is in a republic, the more it is perfect.

Ever since the invention of gunpowder.. I continually tremble lest men should, in the end, uncover some secret which would provide a short way of abolishing mankind, of annihilating peoples and nations in their entirety.