To be happy does not mean to indulge in foolishness!

Genius has no country. It blossoms everywhere. Genius is like the light, the air. It is the heritage of all.

Virtue lies in the middle ground.

Let us not ask for miracles, let us not ask for concern with what is good for the country of him who comes as a stranger to make his fortune and leave afterwards.

No, let us not make God in our image, poor inhabitants that we are of a distant planet lost in infinite space. However brilliant and sublime our intelligence may be, it is scarcely more than a small spark which shines and in an instant is extinguished, and it alone can give us no idea of that blaze, that conflagration, that ocean of light!

Why independence? If the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow.

Man works for an object. Remove that object and you reduce him into inaction.