A certain harmony should be kept between actions and ideas if we want to fully develop the effects they can produce.

It may be said that the vices await us in the journey of life like hosts with whom we must successively lodge; and I doubt whether experience would make us avoid them if we were to travel the same road a second time.

True eloquence consists in saying all that should be said, and that only.

He who imagines he can do without the world deceives himself much; but he who fancies the world cannot do without him is still more mistaken.

We confess to little faults only to persuade ourselves we have no great ones.

Old people love to give good advice; it compensates them for their inability to set a bad example.

On why I don't trust democracy without extremely powerful systems of accountability and recall What seems to be generosity is often only disguised ambition - which despises small interests to gain great ones.