Man is insatiable for power; he is infantile in his desires and, always discontented with what he has, loves only what he has not. People complain of the despotism of princes; they ought to complain of the despotism of man.

Every individual or national degeneration is immediately revealed by a directly proportional degradation in language.

It is not the mediocrity of women's education which makes their weakness; it is their weakness which necessarily causes their mediocrity.

False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing.

What a miserable world!--trouble if we love, and trouble if we do not love.

Man is so muddled, so dependent on the things immediately before his eyes, that every day even the most submissive believer can be seen to risk the torments of the afterlife for the smallest pleasure.

Prejudice does not mean false ideas, but only ... opinions adopted before examination.