In war one must lean on an obstacle in order to overcome it.

Agriculture is the soul and chief support of empires; industry produces riches and the happiness of the people; exportation represents the superabundance, and good use of both.

God has decreed that there be sick and poor in this world, but in the next it will be the other way around.

As a rule it is circumstances that make men.

Republican despotism is more fertile in acts of tyranny, because everyone has a hand in it.

Those who failed to oppose me, who readily agreed with me and accepted all my views, were those who did me the most injury.

Whatever misanthropists may say, ingrates and the perverse are exceptions in the human species.