It is bad governments, not bad people, who cause revolutions.

This world could not exist if it were not so simple. The ground has been tilled a thousand years, yet its powers remain ever the same; a little rain, a little sun, and each spring it grows green again.

Whatever necessity lays upon thee, endure; whatever she commands, do.

There are but few who have ideas and are, at the same time, capable of action. Ideas enlarge but stymie, action enlivens but confines.

When two people are really happy about one another one can generally assume they are mistaken.

Superstition belongs to the essence of mankind and takes refuge, when one thinks one has suppressed it completely, in the strangest nooks and crannies; once it is safely ensconced there, it suddenly reappears.

There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.