When I go out into the countryside and see the sun and the green and everything flowering, I say to myself "Yes indeed, all that belongs to me!"

The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct.

Nothing makes me so happy as to observe nature and to paint what I see.

Cities are the sinks of the human race.

It is not the criminal things which are hardest to confess, but the ridiculous and shameful.

The severity of penalties is only a vain resource, invented by little minds in order to substitute terror for that respect which they have no means of obtaining.

The landscapist lives in silence.