Cowards suffer, heroes enjoy.

Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right... Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

It is the stars as not yet known to science that I would know, the stars which the lonely traveler knows.

I derive no pleasure from talking with a young woman simply because she has regular features.

Every sentence is the result of a long probation.