When we see the many grave-stones which have fallen in, which have been defaced by the footsteps of the congregation, which lie buried under the ruins of the churches, that have themselves crumbled together over them; we may fancy the life after death to be as a second life, into which man enters in the figure, or the picture or the inscription, and lives longer there than when he was really alive. But this figure also, this second existence, dies out too, sooner or later. Time will not allow himself to be cheated of his rights with the monuments of men or with themselves.

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

Power is neither male nor female.

A word spoken is a terrible thing when it suddenly utters what the heart has long allowed.

Since I have heard often enough that everyone in the end has his own religion, nothing seemed more natural to me than to fashion my own.

Nothing is more disgusting than the majority: because it consists of a few powerful predecessors, of rogues who adapt themselves, of weak who assimilate themselves, and the masses who imitate without knowing at all what they want.

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.