It may be objected, that I am now recommending dissimulation to you; I both own and justify it. It has been long said: Qui nescitdissimular nescit regnare: I go still farther, and say, that without some dissimulation, no business can be carried on at all.

Arbitrary power has seldom... been introduced in any country at once. It must be introduced by slow degrees, and as it were step by step.

No man tastes pleasures truly, who does not earn them by previous business; and few people do business well, who do nothing else.

Whoever is in a hurry shows that the thing he is about is too big for him.

It seems to me that your doctor [Tronchin] is more of a philosopher than a physician. As for me, I much prefer a doctor who is anoptimist and who gives me remedies that will improve my health. Philosophical consolations are, after all, useless against real ailments. I know only two kinds of sickness--physical and moral: all the others are purely in the imagination.

Men will not believe because they will not broaden their minds.

Let them show me a cottage where there are not the same vices of which they accuse the courts.