Behold the works of our philosophers; with all their pompous diction, how mean and contemptible they are by comparison with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime should be merely the work of man?
To make a man richer, give him more money of curb his desires.
Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.
O love, if I regret the age when one savors you, it is not for the hour of pleasure, but for the one that follows it.
Supreme happiness consists in self-content; that we may gain this self-content, we are placed upon this earth and endowed with freedom.
Inopportune consolations increase a deep sorrow.
Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.
He who eats in idleness that which he himself has not earned, steals it; and a capitalist whom the state pays for doing nothing differs little in my eyes from a brigand, who lives at the expense of passers-by.
The people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived...
A citizen should render to the state all the services he can as soon as the sovereign demands them.
The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.
Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.
From the first moment of life, men ought to begin learning to deserve to live; and, as at the instant of birth we partake of the rights of citizenship, that instant ought to be the beginning of the exercise of our duty.
It is manifestly contrary to the law of nature, however defined, that a handful of people should gorge themselves with superfluities while the hungry majority goes in need of necessities.
I have never believed that man’s freedom consisted in doing what he wants, but rather in never doing what he does not want to do.
Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.
We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man’s estate, is the gift of education.
The apparent ease with which children learn is their ruin.
It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.
Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.