With a tiny bit of effort, the nettle would be useful; if you neglect it, it becomes a pest. So then we kill it. How many men are like nettles My friends, there is no such thing as a weed and no such thing as a bad man. There are only bad cultivators.

The spirit of God, like the sun, always gives all its light at once. The spirit of man resembles the pale moon, which has its phases, its absences and its returns, its lucidity and its spots, its fullness and its disappearance, which borrows all its light from the rays of the sun, and which still dares to intercept them on occasion.

[T]he small is great, the great is small; all is in equilibrium in necessity.

...there is a point when the unfortunate and the infamous are associated and confused in a word, a mortal word, les miserables

The soul does not give itself up to despair until it has exhausted all illusions.

He who is not master of his own thoughts is not accountable for his own deeds.

First problem. To produce wealth. Second problem. To distribute it.