To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

Laws are always useful to those who possess and vexatious to those who have nothing.

What, then, is the government? An intermediary body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, and charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of freedom, civil as well as political.

That which renders life burdensome to us generally arises from the abuse of it.

Supreme happiness consists in self-content.

War then, is a relation - not between man and man but between state and state and individuals are enemies only accidentally not as men, nor even as citizens but as soldiers not as members of their country, but as its defenders