Nature's instructions are always slow; those of men are generally premature.

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

If it is reason that forms man then it is the emotions that guide her.

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.

Cities are the sinks of the human race.

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.