Too much apparatus, designed to guide us in experiments and to supplement the exactness of our senses, makes us neglect to use those senses...The more ingenious our apparatus, the coarser and more unskillful are our senses. We surround ourselves with tools and fail to use those which nature has provided every one of us.

A feeble body weakens the mind.

In any case, frequent punishments are a sign of weakness or slackness in the government. There is no man so bad that he cannot be made good for something. No man should be put to death, even as an example, if he can be left to live without danger to society.

I had been brought up in a church which decides everything and permits no doubts, so that having rejected one article of faith I was forced to reject the rest.

The animals you eat are not those who devour others; you do not eat the carnivorous beasts, you take them as your pattern. You only hunger for the sweet and gentle creatures which harm no one, which follow you, serve you, and are devoured by you as the reward of their service.

The empire of woman is an empire of softness, of address, of complacency. Her commands are caresses, her menaces are tears.

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.