The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.

Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one's fatherland, which is perishable?

The bad gives rise to the good, the good inspires the better, the better produces the excellent, the excellent is followed by the bizarre

Doctors are always working to preserve our health and cooks to destroy it, but the latter are the more often successful.

How old the world is! I walk between two eternities.... What is my fleeting existence in comparison with that decaying rock, that valley digging its channel ever deeper, that forest that is tottering and those great masses above my head about to fall? I see the marble of tombs crumbling into dust; and yet I don't want to die!

When shall we see poets born? After a time of disasters and great misfortunes, when harrowed nations begin to breathe again. And then, shaken by the terror of such spectacles, imaginations will paint things entirely strange to those who have not witnessed them.

Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.