Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.

The frequent repetition of miracles serves to provoke, where it does not subdue, the reason of mankind.

Fanaticism obliterates the feelings of humanity.

When a public quarrel is envenomed by private injuries, a blow that is not mortal or decisive can be productive only of a short truce, which allows the unsuccessful combatant to sharpen his arms for a new encounter.

The value of money has been settled by general consent to express our wants and our property, as letters were invented to express our ideas; and both these institutions, by giving a more active energy to the powers and passions of human nature, have contributed to multiply the objects they were designed to represent.

Among the innumerable monuments of architecture constructed by the Romans, how many have escaped the notice of history, how few have resisted the ravages of time and barbarism! And yet even the majestic ruins that are still scattered over Italy and the provinces, would be sufficient to prove that those countries were once the seat of a polite and powerful empire.

[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.