It is pardonable to be defeated, but never to be surprised.

To your care and recommendation am I indebted for having replaced a half-blind mathematician with a mathematician with both eyes, which will especially please the anatomical members of my Academy.

No government can exist without taxation. The money must necessarily be levied on the people; and the grand art consists of levying so as not to oppress.

Books make up no small part of human happiness.

Though I may not be a king in my future life, so much the better: I shall nevertheless live an active life and, on top of it, earn less ingratitude.

God is always with the strongest battalions.

Neither antiquity nor any other nation has imagined a more atrocious and blasphemous absurdity than that of eating God. This is how Christians treat the autocrat of the universe.