You despise books; you whose lives are absorbed in the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure or indolence; but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.

I have seen men incapable of the sciences, but never any incapable of virtue.

He who dies before many witnesses always does so with courage.

I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc. It does not behoove us, who were only savages and barbarians when these Indians and Chinese peoples were civilized and learned, to dispute their antiquity.

If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.

Let all the laws be clear, uniform and precise for interpreting laws is almost always to corrupt them.

It is up to us to cultivate our garden.