Men are in general so tricky, so envious, and so cruel that when we find one who is only weak, we are too happy.

What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

All styles are good except the tiresome kind.

So it is the human condition that to wish for the greatness of one's fatherland is to wish evil to one's neighbors. The citizen of the universe would be the man who wishes his country never to be either greater or smaller, richer or poorer.

Happiness is a good that nature sells us.

It would be easier to subjugate the entire universe through force than the minds of a single village.

It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships that they give credibility to the opinions they attack.