If there wasn't a God we would have to invent one to keep people sane.

Teach him to live rather than to avoid death: life is not breath, but action, the use of our senses, our mind, our faculties, every part of ourselves which makes us conscious of our being. Life consists less in length of days than in the keen sense of living. A man maybe buried at a hundred and may never have lived at all. He would have fared better had he died young.

Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.

Heroes are not known by the loftiness of their carriage; the greatest braggarts are generally the merest cowards.

I think we cannot too strongly attack superstition, which is the disturber of society; nor too highly respect genuine religion, which is the support of it.

Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.

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.