The universe was born restless and has never since been still.

Hatred as well as love, renders its votaries credulous.

Politeness requires this thing; decorum that; ceremony has its forms, and fashion its laws, and these must always follow, never the promptings of our own nature.

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!"

It is not I that am drawing, it is this thing at the end of my hand.

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.

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.