If we are more affected by the ruin of a palace than by the conflagration of a cottage, our humanity must have formed a very erroneous estimate of the miseries of human life.

Where the subject lies so far beyond our reach, the difference between the highest and the lowest of human understandings may indeed be calculated as infinitely small; yet the degree of weakness may perhaps be measured by the degree of obstinacy and dogmatic confidence.

The communication of ideas requires a similitude of thought and language . . .

[Instead] of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long.

Religion is a mere question of geography.

[The] liberty of divorce does not contribute to happiness and virtue. The facility of separation would destroy all mutual confidence, and inflame every trifling dispute . . .

[But] the man who dares not expose his life in the defence of his children and his property, has lost in society the first and most active energies of nature.