At our coming into the world we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.

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

That anyone who possesses power has a tendency to abuse it is an eternal truth. They tend to go as far as the barriers will allow.

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

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

[The Pope] will make the king believe that three are only one, that the bread he eats is not bread... and a thousand other things of the same kind.

The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage.