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

All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.

True knowledge of good and evil as we possess is merely abstract or general, and the judgment which we pass on the order of things and the connection of causes, with a view to determining what is good or bad for us in the present, is rather imaginary than real.

If anyone conceives, that an object of his love joins itself to another with closer bonds of friendship than he himself has attained to, he will be affected with hatred towards the loved object and with envy towards his rival.

In the state of nature, wrong-doing is impossible; or, if anyone does wrong, it is to himself, not to another. For no one by the law of nature is bound to please another, unless he chooses, nor to hold anything to be good or evil, but what he himself, according to his own temperament, pronounces to be so; and, to speak generally, nothing is forbidden by the law of nature, except what is beyond everyone's power.

If anyone conceives that he is loved by another, and believes that he has given no cause for such love, he will love that other in return.

In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth.