The most original of authors are not so because they advance what is new, but more because they know how to say something, as if it had never been said before.

If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.

The world cannot do without great men, but great men are very troublesome to the world.

No matter what one says, you can recognize only those matters that are equal to you. Only rulers who possess extraordinary abilities will recognize and esteem properly extraordinary abilities in their subjects and servants.

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

The mind is found most acute and most uneasy in the morning. Uneasiness is, indeed, a species of sagacity - a passive sagacity. Fools are never uneasy.

Were not the eye made to receive the rays of the sun, it could not behold the sun; if the peculiar power of God lay not in us, how could the godlike charm us?