Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

We need not have the loftiest mind to understand that here is no lasting and real satisfaction, that our pleasures are only vanity, that our evils are infinite, and, lastly, that death, which threatens us every moment, must infallibly place us within a few years under the dreadful necessity of being forever either annihilated or unhappy.

Vanity is illustrated in the cause and effect of love, as in the case of Cleopatra.

If you want others to have a good opinion of you, say nothing.

Undoubtedly equality of goods is just; but, being unable to cause might to obey justice, men has made it just to obey might. Unable to strengthen justice, they have justified might--so that the just and the strong should unite, and there should be peace, which is the sovereign good.

That a religion may be true, it must have knowledge of our nature.

Instead of complaining that God had hidden himself, you will give Him thanks for having revealed so much of Himself.