I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had some one pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: "Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!

I have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described.

Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity.

Taste is, so to speak, the microscope of the judgment.

The empire of woman is an empire of softness, of address, of complacency. Her commands are caresses, her menaces are tears.

Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.