I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should appear like a fool but be wise.
Power ought to serve as a check to power.
People here argue about religion interminably, but it appears that they are competing at the same time to see who can be the least devout.
Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.
Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies governed by invariable laws.
Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.
Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit.
Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth: the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied.
In bodies moved, the motion is received, increased, diminished, or lost, according to the relations of the quantity of matter and velocity; each diversity is uniformity, each change is constancy.
I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.
Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.
Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.
Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?
A man should be mourned at his birth, not at his death.