Idleness is a mother. She has a son, robbery, and a daughter, hunger.

I would rather be the head of a fly than the tail of a lion.

The beginning as well as the end of all his thoughts was hatred of human law, that hatred which, if it be not checked in its growth by some providential event, becomes, in a certain time, hatred of society, then hatred of the human race, and then hatred of creation, and reveals itself by a vague and incessant desire to injure some living being, it matters not who.

Nothing is more dangerous than discontinued labor; it is habit lost. A habit easy to abandon, difficult to resume.

Let us have compassion for those under chastisement. Alas, who are we ourselves? Who am I and who are you? Whence do we come and is it quite certain that we did nothing before we were born? This earth is not without some resemblance to a gaol. Who knows but that man is a victim of divine justice? Look closely at life. It is so constituted that one senses punishment everywhere.

Why worry about what threatens our heads or purses? Let us think instead of what threatens our souls.

Everything being a constant carnival, there is no carnival left.