I believed that I was approaching the end of my days without having tasted to the full any of the pleasures for which my heart thirsted...without having ever tasted that passion which, through lack of an object, was always suppressed. ...The impossibility of attaining the real persons precipitated me into the land of chimeras; and seeing nothing that existed worthy of my exalted feelings, I fostered them in an ideal world which my creative imagination soon peopled with beings after my own heart.

Usurpers always bring about or select troublous times to get passed, under cover of the public terror, destructive laws, which the people would never adopt in cold blood. The moment chosen is one of the surest means of distinguishing the work of the legislator from that of the tyrant.

In the North the first words are, Help me; in the South, Love me.

The man who gets the most out of life is not the one who has lived it longest, but the one who has felt life most deeply.

Girls must be thwarted early in life.

If there were a people consisting of gods, they would be governed democratically. So perfect a government is not suitable to men.

In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist.