Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.

The only treaties that ought to count are those which would effect a settlement between ulterior motives.

Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.

The dog has made man their God, if the dog was an atheist, it would be perfect.

It is a law of nature that we defend ourselves from one affection only by means of another.

Order always weighs on the individual. Disorder makes him wish for the police or for death. These are two extreme circumstances in which human nature is not at ease.

Fidelity to meaning alone in translation is a kind of betrayal.