“Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one’s wit at the expense of one’s better nature.”

The love of study is in us the only lasting passion. All the others quit us in proportion as this miserable machine which holds them approaches its ruins.

In constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the subsititue is light taxes.

Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their laws: the Deity His laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws.

Virtue is necessary to a republic.

Virtue has needs of limits.

The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.

The pagan religion, which prohibited only some of the grosser crimes, and which stopped the hand but meddled not with the heart, might have crimes that were inexplicable.

Peace is a natural effect of trade.

The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage.

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.

There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.

There is as yet no liberty if the power of judging be not separated from legislative power and the executrix

Men in excess of happiness or misery are equally inclined to severity. Witness conquerors and monks! It is mediocrity alone, and a mixture of prosperous and adverse fortune that inspire us with lenity and pity.

The alms given to a naked man in the street do not fulfil the obligations of the state, which owes to every citizen a certain subsistence, a proper nourishment, convenient clothing, and a kind of life not incompatible with health.

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.

A rational army would run away.

Biggest affirmative argument I know in favor of ‘If a man die, shall he live again?’ is just the way you feel inside you that nothin’ can stop you from livin’ on.

Most people are in favor of change, as long as they can continue to do things the same as they always have.

to ask for anything of consequence from friends who cannot refuse is uncivilized.

Fortune, that favors fools.

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

Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous.

Sekhmet crawled onto Ramses’s lap and began to purr. ‘The creature oozes like a furry slug,’ said Ramses, eyeing it without favor.

Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.