I hate books they teach us only to talk about what we do not know.
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
Man was born free and everywhere he is in shackles.
All that time is lost which might be better employed.
However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.
How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?
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.
Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.
No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.
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.
Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.
Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.
Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.
Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.
Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.
Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.
Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.
Base souls have no faith in great individuals.
The world of reality has its limits the world of imagination is boundless.
Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.
No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.
A feeble body weakens the mind.
Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.
