An infallible method of making fanatics is to persuade before you instruct.

We adore, we invoke, we seek to appease, only that which we fear.

The worthy administrators of justice are like a cat set to take care of a cheese, lest it should be gnawed by the mice. One bite of the cat does more damage to the cheese than twenty mice can do.

We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies - it is the first law of nature.

To caress the serpent that devours us, until it has eaten away our heart.

Men appear to prefer ruining one another's fortunes, and cutting each other's throats about a few paltry villages, to extending the grand means of human happiness.

Our priests are not what a silly populace supposes; all their learning consists in our credulity.