Equality is deemed by many a mere speculative chimera, which can never be reduced to practice. But if the abuse is inevitable, does it follow that we ought not to try at least to mitigate it? It is precisely because the force of things tends always to destroy equality that the force of the legislature must always tend to maintain it.

To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.

Jewish authors would never have invented either that style nor that morality; and the Gospel has marks of truth so great, so striking, so utterly inimitable, that the invention of it would be more astonishing than the hero.

Government originated in the attempt to find a form of association that defends and protects the person and property of each with the common force of all.

I feel an indescribable ecstasy and delirium in melting, as it were, into the system of being, in identifying myself with the whole of nature.

To study men, we must look close by; to study man, we must learn to look afar; if we are to discover essential characteristics, we must first observe differences.

Definitions would be good things if we did not use words to make them.