Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing, and a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson.
What, then, do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.
What is toleration? It is the appurtenance of humanity. We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies—it is the first law of nature.
What is called happiness is an abstract idea, composed of various ideas of pleasure; for he who has but a moment of pleasure is not a happy man, in like manner that a moment of grief constitutes not a miserable one.
Weakness on both sides is, as we know, the motto of all quarrels.
Very learned women are to be found in the same manner as female warriors, but they are seldom or ever inventors.
To constitute taste, it is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.
This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind; it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.
The wicked find a pretext in everything.
The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice.
The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.
The little may contrast with the great in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Opposition of colors contrasts; but there are also colors contrary to each other; that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.
