Now, you receive all your ideas; therefore you receive your wish, you wish therefore necessarily. The word "liberty" does not therefore belong in any way to your will....The will, therefore, is not a faculty that one can call free. A free will is an expression absolutely void of sense, and what the scholastics have called will of indifference, that is to say willing without cause, is a chimera unworthy of being combated.

It is the first law of friendship that it has to be cultivated. The second is to be indulgent when the first law is neglected.

Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one's garden.

A good action is preferable to an argument.

Often the prudent, far from making their destinies, succumb to them. -Francois

If we would destroy the Christian religion, we must first of all destroy man's belief in the Bible.

Not all citizens can be equally strong; but they can all be equally free.