A man says what he knows, a woman says what will please.

At Genoa, the word Liberty may be read over the front of the prisons and on the chains of the galley-slaves. This application of the device is good and just. It is indeed only malefactors of all estates who prevent the citizen from being free. In the country in which all such men were in the galleys, the most perfect liberty would be enjoyed.

The abuse of books kills science. Believing that we know what we have read, we believe that we can dispense with learning it.

All kinds of frankness and honesty are terrible crimes in the eyes of society.

Self-love is an instrument useful but dangerous; it often wounds the hand which makes use of it, and seldom does good without doing harm.

My bad head cannot adjust itself to the way things are.... If I want to depict spring, it has to be in wintertime; if I want to describe a beautiful landscape, I must be enclosed within walls; and I have said a hundred times that if I were put in the Bastille, there I would paint a picture of liberty.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.