Not because Socrates said so, but because it is in truth my own disposition — and perchance to some excess — I look upon all men as my compatriots, and embrace a Pole as a Frenchman, making less account of the national than of the universal and common bond.

The shortest way to arrive at glory should be to do that for conscience which we do for glory. And the virtue of Alexander appears to me with much less vigor in his theater than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure. I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates I cannot.

Whoever will be cured of ignorance, let him confess it.

Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.

Is it reasonable that even the arts should take advantage of and profit by our natural stupidity and feebleness of mind?

Necessity reconciles and brings men together; and this accidental connection afterward forms itself into laws.

Others form man; I tell of him, and portray a particular one, very ill-formed, whom I should really make very different from whathe is if I had to fashion him over again. But now it is done.