Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.

Liberty... is there only when there is no abuse of power.

It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is lessneed of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.

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

The state is the association of men, and not men themselves; the citizen may perish, and the man remain.

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

If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.