“Alas, it is when we are beginning to leave this mortal body that it most offends us!”

What good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?

Every artists wants to be applauded

I am not made like any of those I have seen. I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different.

All my misfortunes come of having thought too well of my fellows.

If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.

Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.

He who pretends to look on death without fear lies. All men are afraid of dying, this is the great law of sentient beings, without which the entire human species would soon be destroyed.

From this it follows that, the larger the State, the less the liberty.

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

To live is not merely to breathe; it is to act; it is to make use of our organs, senses, faculties – of all those parts of ourselves which give us the feeling of existence.

The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.

It is pity in which the state of nature takes the place of laws, morals and virtues, with the added advantage that no one there is tempted to disobey its gentle voice.

There is no evildoer who could not be made good for something.

My birth was my first misfortune.

I perceive God everywhere in His works. I sense Him in me; I see Him all around me.

The people of England regards itself as free; but it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing.

It is said of great Empires, That the best way to preserve them from decay, is to bring them back to the first Principles, and Arts, on which they did begin.”

Taking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the time when Newton lived, what he had done was much the better half.

By regarding ourselves with kindness, we begin to dissolve the identity of an isolated, deficient self. This creates the grounds for including others in an unconditionally loving heart.

Brokenness is a beginning.

Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.

The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next.

An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I’ve left the opera house.

When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often then not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.