I bold it impossible, that the great monarchies of Europe can subsist much longer; they all affect magnificence and splendor.

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

Education is either from nature, from man or from things. The developing of our faculties and organs is the education of nature; that of man is the application we learn to make of this very developing; and that of things is the experience we acquire in regard to the different objects by which we are affected. All that we have not at our birth, and that we stand in need of at the years of maturity, is the gift of education.

And when the relics of humanity left among the Spaniards induced them to forbid their lawyers to set foot in America, what must they have thought of jurisprudence? May it not be said that they thought, by this single expedient, to make reparation for all the outrages they had committed against the unhappy Indians?

The strength of the people is effective only if it is concentrated; it evaporates and is lost when it is dispersed, just as gunpowder scattered on the ground ignites only grain by grain.

I loved too sincerely, too completely, I venture to say, to be able to be happy easily.

The mechanism she employs is much more powerful than ours, for all her levers move the human heart.