Let us now speak according to natural lights. If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible. . . . We are then incapable of knowing of either what He is or if He is. . . .

Civil wars are the greatest of evils. They are inevitable, if we wish to reward merit, for all will say that they are meritorious.

There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present.

If man were happy, he would be the more so, the less he was diverted, like the saints and God.

All mankind's troubles are caused by one single thing, which is their inability to sit quietly.

It is dangerous to tell the people that the laws are unjust; for they obey them only because they think them just. Therefore it isnecessary to tell them at the same time that they must obey them because they are laws, just as they must obey superiors, not because they are just, but because they are superiors. In this way all sedition is prevented.

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.