Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world, but degenerates once it gets into the hands of man

Supreme happiness consists in self-content; that we may gain this self-content, we are placed upon this earth and endowed with freedom.

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls.

That man is truly free who desires what he is able to perform, and does what he desires.

Men speak from knowledge, women from imagination.

I love idleness. I love to busy myself about trifles, to begin a hundred things and not finish one of them, to come and go as my fancy bids me, to change my plan every moment, to follow a fly in all its circlings, to try and uproot a rock to see what is underneath, eagerly to begin a ten-years' task to give it up after ten minutes: in short, to fritter away the whole day inconsequentially and incoherently, and to follow nothing but the whim of the moment.

The most absolute authority is that which penetrates into a man's innermost being and concerns itself no less with his will than with his actions.