Inopportune consolations increase a deep sorrow.

The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it.

Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.

A born king is a very rare being.

Equality is deemed by many a mere speculative chimera, which can never be reduced to practice. But if the abuse is inevitable, does it follow that we ought not to try at least to mitigate it? It is precisely because the force of things tends always to destroy equality that the force of the legislature must always tend to maintain it.

All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.

Men and women are made for each other, but their mutual dependence differs in degrees; man is dependent on woman through his desires; woman is dependent on man through her desires and also through her needs; he could do without her better than she can do without him. She cannot fulfill her purpose in life without his aid, without his goodwill, without his respect.....Nature herself has decreed that woman, both for herself and her children, should be at the mercy of man s judgment.