Every man having been born free and master of himself, no one else may under any pretext whatever subject him without his consent. To assert that the son of a slave is born a slave is to assert that he is not born a man.

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.

Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.

The opportunity of making happy is more scarce than we imagine; the punishment of missing it is, never to meet with it again; and the use we make of it leaves us an eternal sentiment of satisfaction or repentance.

Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given to us by education.

All that time is lost which might be better employed.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.