Today there are no more irreconcilable enmities, because there are no more disinterested emotions: that's a good thing born from a bad thing.

Every legitimate authority should respect its extent and its limits.

A man who shows no defect is a fool or a hypocrite, whom we should mistrust. There are defects so bound to fine qualities that they announce them,--defects which it is well not to correct.

We use up in the passions the stuff that was given us for happiness.

Thoughts there are, that need no embodying, no form, no expression. It is enough to hint at them vaguely; a word, and they are heard and seen.

It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.

The Bible is to religion what the Iliad is to poetry