If passion sometimes counsels greater boldness than does reflection, it gives more strength to execute it.

The law cannot equalize mankind in spite of nature.

It is of no use to possess a lively wit if it is not of the right proportion: the perfection of a clock is not to go fast, but to be accurate.

To execute great things, one should live as though one would never die.

There does not exist a man sufficiently intelligent never to be tiresome.

The generality of men are so bound within the sphere of their circumstances that they have not even the courage to get out of them through their ideas, and if we see a few whom, in a way, speculation over great things makes incapable of mean ones, we find still more with whom the practice of small things takes away the feeling for great ones.

Despair is the greatest of our errors.