To renounce freedom is to renounce one's humanity, one's rights as a man and equally one's duties.

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 first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had some one pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: "Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived, and on such occasions only does it seem to will what is bad.

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.

Women, in general, are not attracted to art at all, nor knowledge, and not at all to genius.

Force does not constitute right... obedience is due only to legitimate powers.