“The false notion of miracles comes of our vanity, which makes us believe we are important enough for the Supreme Being to upset nature on our behalf.”

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.

Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune.

Liberty… is there only when there is no abuse of power.

Oh, how empty is praise when it reflects back to its origin!

Power ought to serve as a check to power.

If you would be holy, instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you.

When we seek after wit, we discover only foolishness.

The power of divorce can be given only to those who feel the inconveniences of marriage, and who are sensible of the moment when it is for their interest to make them cease.

If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier that other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are. you are comparing your lot with an ideal which is of course better and therefore you feel worse

Friendship is an arrangement by which we undertake to exchange small favors for big ones.

Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.

When the [law making] and [law enforcement] powers are united in the same person… there can be no liberty.

They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more unreasonable than to pretend that a blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings.

Vanity and pride of nations; vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous.

It is always the adventurous who accomplish great things.

It is thus superstition infatuates man from his infancy, fills him with vanity, and enslaves him with fanaticism.

You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting “Vanity,” thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure.

I Have often thought if the minds of men were laid open, we should see but little difference between that of the wise man and that of the fool.

Where in this wide world can man find nobility without pride, friendship without envy, or beauty without vanity?

Vanity is the healthiest thing in life.

Luxury is the income tax of vanity. But it is so pleasant.

Vanity and narcissism – the compulsive need to be admired and praised – undermine one’s courage, for one then fights on someone else’s conviction rather than one’s own.

Vanity, fear, desire, competition – all such distortions within our own egos – condition our vision of those in relation to us.