When my reason is afloat, my faith cannot long remain in suspense, and I believe in God as firmly as in any other truth whatever; in short, a thousand motives draw me to the consolatory side, and add the weight of hope to the equilibrium of reason.

Cities are the abyss of the human species.

Definitions would be good things if we did not use words to make them.

A citizen should render to the state all the services he can as soon as the sovereign demands them.

One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.

I feel an indescribable ecstasy and delirium in melting, as it were, into the system of being, in identifying myself with the whole of nature.

I perceive God everywhere in His works. I sense Him in me; I see Him all around me.