A fondness for reading changes the inevitable dull hours of our life into exquisite hours of delight.

Democracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is corrupted, but likewise when they fall into a spirit of extreme equality.

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

Democracy has two excesses to avoid: the spirit of inequality, which leads to an aristocracy, or to the government of a single individual; and the spirit of extreme equality, which conducts it to despotism, as the despotism of a single individual finishes by conquest.

The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.

The majority of men are more capable of great actions than of good ones.

Men should be bewailed at their birth, and not at their death.