The more humanity owes him, the more society denies him. Every door is shut against him, even when he has a right to its being opened: and if he ever obtains justice, it is with much greater difficulty than others obtain favors.

Remorse sleeps during a prosperous period but wakes up in adversity.

The infant, on opening his eyes, ought to see his country, and to the hour of his death never lose sight of it.

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.

I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.

The social pact, far from destroying natural equality, substitutes, on the contrary, a moral and lawful equality for whatever physical inequality that nature may have imposed on mankind; so that however unequal in strength and intelligence, men become equal by covenant and by right.

A man speaks of what he knows, a woman of what pleases her: the one requires knowledge, the other taste.