Virtue is necessary to a republic.

Trade is the best cure for prejudice.

Fain would I glide down a gentle river, but I am carried away by a torrent.

People here argue about religion interminably, but it appears that they are competing at the same time to see who can be the least devout.

I never listen to calumnies, because if they are untrue I run the risk of being deceived, and if they be true, of hating persons not worth thinking about.

In vain do we seek tranquility in the desert; temptations are always with us; our passions, represented by the demons, never let us alone: those monsters created by the heart, those illusions produced by the mind, those vain specters that are our errors and our lies always appear before us to seduce us; they attack us even in our fasting or our mortifications, in other words, in our very strength.

Every man who has power is impelled to abuse it.