Everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find.

If slavery, barbarism and desolation are to be called peace, men can have no worse misfortune.

The greatest secret of monarchic rule...is to keep men deceived and to cloak in the specious name of religion the fear by which they must be checked, so that they will fight for slavery as they would for salvation, and will think it not shameful, but a most honorable achievement, to give their life and blood that one man may have a ground for boasting.

The eternal wisdom of God ... has shown itself forth in all things, but chiefly in the mind of man, and most of all in Jesus Christ.

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

A man is as much affected pleasurably or painfully by the image of a thing past or future as by the image of a thing present.

I can control my passions and emotions if I can understand their nature