By annihilating desires, you annihilate the mind.

To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves: such a prohibition ought to fill them with disdain.

Envy honors the dead in order to insult the living.

What makes men happy is liking what they have to do. This is a principle on which society is not founded

There are men whom a happy disposition, a strong desire of glory and esteem, inspire with the same love for justice and virtue which men in general have for riches and honors. But the number of these men is so small that I only mention them in honor of humanity.

Must we, under the happy hope of a false tranquility, sacrifice to the people in power the public welfare, and under vain pretence of preserving the peace, abandon the empire to robbers who would plunder it

A man who believes that he eats his God we do not call mad; yet, a man who says he is Jesus Christ, we call mad.