Do not judge, and you will never be mistaken.

Sacrifice life to truth.

It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.

The mechanism she employs is much more powerful than ours, for all her levers move the human heart.

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

Everything is in constant flux on this earth. Nothing keeps the same unchanging shape, and our affections, being attached to things outside us, necessarily change and pass away as they do. Always out ahead of us or lagging behind, they recall a past which is gone or anticipate a future which may never come into being; there is nothing solid there for the heart to attach itself to. Thus our earthly joys are almost without exception the creatures of a moment.

At Genoa, the word Liberty may be read over the front of the prisons and on the chains of the galley-slaves. This application of the device is good and just. It is indeed only malefactors of all estates who prevent the citizen from being free. In the country in which all such men were in the galleys, the most perfect liberty would be enjoyed.