"Shame is a secret pride; and pride is an error with regard to one's own worth, and an injustice with regard to what one has a mind to appear to others. (p. 204)."

"With great employments and vulgar maxims, one is always restless and uneasy : it is not places, but reason, that removes anxiety from the mind. (p. 170)."

"The most necessary disposition to relish pleasures is to know how to be without them. (p. 160)."

"The principal merit which should be required in our friends, is virtue : It is that which assures us they are capable of friendship, and worthy of it : expect nothing from your connections, when they have not this foundation. (pp. 54-55)."

"A man that does not aim at raising to himself a great name, will never perform any great actions. And such as go carelessly on in the road of their professions suffer all the fatigues, without acquiring either the honour or recompense that naturally attend it. (p. 137)."

"“During Humankind’s long centuries societies have risen and fallen, all alike in this one fact which rules all history: the great are protected, the small are crushed.”"

"“Dead trees enclosed the bodies of men and women, violently distorted and subjected to hideous and shameful tortures.” (Garden of Tortures)"

"Birth bestows less of honour than it demands; and to boast of ancestry is but to praise the merit of others. (p. 139)."

"A Persian ambassador asked the wife of Leonidas, why they paid such honors to the women at Lacedemon? "It is," replied she, "because they have entirely the forming of the men." (p. 143)."

"The love of esteem is the life and soul of society; it unites us to one another : I want your approbation, you stand in need of mine. By forsaking the converse of men, we forsake the virtues necessary for society; for when one is alone, one is apt to grow negligent; the world forces you to have a guard over yourself. (p. 155)."

"The owning of faults is no hard matter for persons that find a fund within themselves to mend them. (p. 153)."

"We are not indeed obliged always to speak what we think, but we must always think what we speak. (p. 149)."

"We fancy frequently that we have no grudge but against the men, when indeed our malignity is owing to their places : persons in great posts never yet enjoyed them with the good liking of the world, which only begins to do them justice when they are out of place. (p. 148)."

"Terror, salutary terror, is here in truth the order of the day; it represses all the efforts of the wicked ; it divests crime of all covering and tinsel!"

"Death is an eternal sleep."

""It is more than a crime; it is a political fault," —words which I record, because they have been repeated and attributed to others."

"L'arbre de la liberté ne croit qu'arrosé par le sang des tyrans."

"II n'ya que les morts qui ne reviennent pas."

"Lazy people are always looking for something to do."

"Our failings sometimes bind us to one another as closely as could virtue itself."

"The things we know best are the things we haven't been taught."

"Emotion has taught mankind to reason."

"Equality is not a law of nature. Nature has made no two things equal: its sovereign law is subordination and dependence."

"There is nothing that fear or hope does not make men believe."

"Truth is the sun of the intelligence."

"Patience is the art of hoping."

"No one wishes to be pitied on account of his errors."

"Great thoughts spring from the heart."

"There are few things that we know well."

"Great men undertake great things because they are great, and fools because they think them easy."

"Virtue is so praiseworthy that wicked people practice it from self-interest."

"War is not as onerous as servitude."

"Constancy is the chimera of love."

"Fools never understand people of wit."

"Prosperity makes few friends."

"Some are born to invent, others to embellish; but the gilder attracts more attention than the architect."

"We promise much, that we may give little."

"There does not exist a man sufficiently intelligent never to be tiresome."

"In order to do great things, we should live as though we were never to die."

"It cannot be a vice in men to be sensible of their strength."

"Whatever affection we have for our friends or relations, the happiness of others never suffices for our own."

"Great men are sometimes so even in small things."

"When we are convinced of some great truths, and feel our convictions keenly, we must not fear to express it, although others have said it before us. Every thought is new when an author expresses it in a manner peculiar to himself."

"Children are ... encouraged to be imitators, a course to which they are already too much inclined. No one thinks of making them original, courageous, independent."

"If children had teachers for judgment and eloquence as they have for languages, if their memory was exercised less than their energy or their natural genius, if instead of deadening their vivacity of mind we tried to elevate the free scope and impulses of their souls, what might not result from a fine disposition? As it is, we forget that courage, or love of truth and glory are the virtues that matter most in youth; and our one endeavor is to subdue our children’s spirits, in order to teach them that dependence and suppleness are the first laws of success in life."

"If a man is endowed with a noble and courageous soul, if he is painstaking, proud, ambitious, without meanness, of a profound a deep-seated intelligence, I dare assert that he lacks nothing to be neglected by the great and men in high office, who fear, more than other men, those whom they cannot dominate."

"It is in our own mind and not in exterior objects that we perceive most things; fools know scarcely anything because they are empty, and their heart is narrow; but great souls find in themselves a number of exterior things; they have no need to read or travel or to listen or to work to discover the highest truths; they have only to delve into themselves and search, if we may say so, their own thoughts."

"As it is natural to believe many things without proof, so, despite all proof, is it natural to disbelieve others."

"La foi est la consolation des misérables et la terreur des heureux."