When a miser contents himself with giving nothing, and saving what he has got, and is in other respects guilty of no injustice, he is, perhaps, of all bad men the least injurious to society; the evil he does is properly nothing more than the omission of the good he might do. If, of all the vices, avarice is the most generally detested, it is the effect of an avidity common to all men; it is because men hate those from whom they can expect nothing. The greedy misers rail at sordid misers.

The man who believes he can do it is probably right.

Envy honors the dead in order to insult the living.

Genius is nothing but continued attention.

Pleasure and pain are the only springs of action in man, and always will be.

Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.

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.