He who blushes is already guilty.

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.

My bad head cannot adjust itself to the way things are.... If I want to depict spring, it has to be in wintertime; if I want to describe a beautiful landscape, I must be enclosed within walls; and I have said a hundred times that if I were put in the Bastille, there I would paint a picture of liberty.

Laws are always useful to those who possess and vexatious to those who have nothing.

There is peace in dungeons, but is that enough to make dungeons desirable?

...in respect of riches, no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself.

Gracefulness cannot subsist without ease; delicacy is not debility; nor must a woman be sick in order to please. Infirmity, and sickness may excite our pity, but desire and pleasure require the bloom and vigor of health.