Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them.

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

The greater emotion with which we conceive a loved object to be affected toward us, the greater will be our complacency.

He who hates anyone will endeavor to do him an injury, unless he fears that a greater injury will thereby accrue to himself; on the other hand, he who loves anyone will, by the same law, seek to benefit him.

Nature is satisfied with little; and if she is, I am also.

It is usually the case with most men that their nature is so constituted that they pity those who fare badly and envy those who fare well.

.... we are a part of nature as a whole, whose order we follow.