Countries are not cultivated in proportion to their fertility, but to their liberty.

There should be weeping at a man's birth, not at his death.

Those who have few affairs to attend to are great speakers. The less men think, the more they talk.

It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.

They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more unreasonable than to pretend that a blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings.

I acknowledge that history is full of religious wars: but we must distinguish; it is not the multiplicity of religions which has produced these wars; it was the intolerating spirit which animated that one which thought she had the power of governing.

Peace is a natural effect of trade.