Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia; it is by no means a representative of reason.

Love, whether sexual, parental, or fraternal, is essentially sacrificial, and prompts a man to give his life for his friends.

Tolerated people are never conciliated. They live on, but the aroma of their life is lost.

The fact of having been born is a bad augury for immortality.

Words are weapons, and it is dangerous . . . to borrow them from the arsenal of the enemy.

Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.

Mortality has its compensations; one is that all evils are transitory, another that better times may come.