Fame has also this great drawback, that if we pursue it, we must direct our lives so as to please the fancy of men.

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

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

Blessed are the weak who think that they are good because they have no claws.

From what has been said we can clearly understand the nature of Love and Hate. Love is nothing else but pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause: Hate is nothing else but pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause. We further see, that he who loves necessarily endeavors to have, and to keep present to him, the object of his love; while he who hates endeavors to remove and destroy the object of his hatred.

Nature offers nothing that can be called this man's rather than another's; but under nature everything belongs to all.

Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained.