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.

It is hard to prevent oneself from believing what one so keenly desires.

Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.

A man who is not a fool can rid himself of every folly except vanity.

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

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

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