We have to have powder for our wigs; that is why so many poor people have no bread.

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.

Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education. .. We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education.

Whoever refuses to obey the general will will be forced to do so by the entire body; this means merely that he will be forced to be free.

This dog, which, although no beauty, was of an uncommon breed, I had made my friend and companion; and it certainly deserved the name better than the majority of those who had assumed it.

A person who can break wind is not dead.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.