“Talent is a gift which God has given us secretly, and which we reveal without perceiving it.”

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 always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.

We ought to be very cautious and circumspect in the prosecution of magic and heresy. The attempt to put down these two crimes may be extremely perilous to liberty.

Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.

Christianity stamped its character on jurisprudence; for empire has ever a connection with the priesthood.

An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.

Thus the creation, which seems an arbitrary act, supposes laws as invariable as those of the fatality of the Atheists. It would be absurd to say that the Creator might govern the world without those rules, since without them it could not subsist.

Passion makes us feel, but never see clearly.

The state of slavery is in its own nature bad.

Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?

To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.

When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws.

We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our school-masters, and one from the world. The third contradicts all that the first two teach us.

Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.

When a government is arrived to that degree of corruption as to be incapable of reforming itself, it would not lose much by being new moulded.

People will never fight for your freedom if you have not given evidence that you are prepared to fight for it yourself.

Wisdom is meaningless until your own experience has given it meaning, and there is wisdom in the selection of wisdom.

There are things that are a given, that you’ve already established, and obviously, visually, certain iconic things that can’t be completely removed, like a certain hat or a certain coat in my case.

There is no truth which cannot be given in fifty words; the truth is always concise.

But forgiveness must not only be given but received also.

I wasn’t supported, I wasn’t given any self-esteem.

Everybody who talks to a newspaper has a motive. That’s just a given. And good reporters always, repeat always, probe to find out what that motive is.

That is the exciting thing: I don’t know what God has given me for tomorrow.