Real worth requires no interpreter: its everyday deeds form its emblem.

Narrow waists and narrow minds go together.

Society is composed of two great classes, those that have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.

In love, everything is true, everything is false; it is the one subject on which one cannot express an absurdity.

What one knows best is ... what one has learned not from books but as a result of books, through the reflections to which they have given rise.

We leave unmolested those who set the fire to the house, and prosecute those who sound the alarm.

Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.