If I should go out of church whenever I hear a false statement I could never stay there five minutes. But why come out? The streetis as false as the church, and when I get to my house, or to my manners, or to my speech, I have not got away from the lie.

That which we call sin in others is experiment for us.

Heaven often protects valuable souls charged with great secrets, great ideas, by long shutting them up with their own thoughts.

The vulgar call good fortune that which really is produced by the calculations of genius.

The terrible tabulation of the French statists brings every piece of whim and humor to be reducible also to exact numerical ratios. If one man in twenty thousand, or in thirty thousand, eats shoes, or marries his grandmother, then, in every twenty thousand, or thirty thousand, is found one man who eats shoes, or marries his grandmother.

All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are ... punished by fear.

Why needs a man be rich? Why must he have horses, fine garments, handsome apartments, access to public houses, and places of amusement? Only for want of thought.