What makes men happy is liking what they have to do. This is a principle on which society is not founded
Claude Adrien HelvetiusDiscipline is, in a manner, nothing else but the art of inspiring the soldiers with greater fear of their officers than of the enemy. This fear has often the effect of courage: but it cannot prevail against the fierce and obstinate valor of people animated by fanaticism, or warm love of their country.
Claude Adrien HelvetiusHarsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.
Claude Adrien HelvetiusWhen 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.
Claude Adrien Helvetius