It is difficult to esteem a man as highly as he would wish.

Men crowd into honorable careers without other vocation than their vanity, or at best their love of fame.

One promises much, to avoid giving little.

The maxim that men are not to be praised before their death was invented by envy and too lightly adopted by philosophers.

Servitude degrades people to such a point that they come to like it.

To withdraw ourselves from the law of the strong, we have found ourselves obliged to submit to justice. Justice or might, we must choose between these two masters.

When an idea is not robust enough to stand expression in simple terms, it is a sign that it should be rejected.