War is the greatest of all crimes; and yet there is no aggressor who does not color his crime with the pretext of justice.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.

How pleasant it is for a father to sit at his child's board. It is like an aged man reclining under the shadow of an oak which he has planted.

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.

We have our arts, the ancients had theirs... We cannot raise obelisks a hundred feet high in a single piece, but our meridians are more exact.

Everything I see about me is sowing the seeds of a revolution that is inevitable, though I shall not have the pleasure of seeing it. The lightning is so close at hand that it will strike at the first chance, and then there will be a pretty uproar. The young are fortunate, for they will see fine things.