Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues.

Chess is too difficult to be a game and not serious enough to be a science or an art.

People take England on trust, and repeat that Shakespeare is the greatest of all authors. I have read him: there is nothing that compares Racine or Corneille: his plays are unreadable, pitiful.

Music, of all the liberal arts, has the greatest influence over the passions, and it is that to which the legislator ought to give the greatest encouragement.

One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent.

Medicine is a collection of uncertain prescriptions, the results of which, taken collectively, are more fatal than useful to mankind.

Audacity succeeds as often as it fails; in life it has an even chance.