The crime against nature will never make any great progress in society unless people are prompted to it by some particular custom.

This punishment of death is the remedy, as it were, of a sick society.

The false notion of miracles comes of our vanity, which makes us believe we are important enough for the Supreme Being to upset nature on our behalf.

The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.

But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.

Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.

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