“What, then, is the government? An intermediary body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, a body charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of freedom, both civil and political.”

Girls should learn that so much finery is only put on to hide defects, and that the triumph of beauty is to shine by itself.

To renounce freedom is to renounce one’s humanity, one’s rights as a man and equally one’s duties.

We cannot teach children the danger of lying to men without feeling as men, the greater danger of lying to children.

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

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.

I have never thought, for my part, that man’s freedom consists in his being able to do whatever he wills, but that he should not, by any human power, be forced to do what is against his will.

It is a great evil for a Chief of a nation to be born the enemy of the freedom whose defender he should be.

Or, rather, let us be more simple and less vain.

Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?

I feel an indescribable ecstasy and delirium in melting, as it were, into the system of being, in identifying myself with the whole of nature.

I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.

Nature made me happy and good, and if I am otherwise, it is society’s fault.

If force compels obedience, there is no need to invoke a duty to obey, and if force ceases to compel obedience, there is no longer any obligation.

There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

Quit thy childhood, my friend, and wake up!

Remember that bodily exercise, when it is well ordered, as I have said, is also prayer by means of which you can please God our Lord.

Souls without prayer are like bodies, palsied and lame, having hands and feet they cannot use.

Don’t be shy my love come close not with body but with raw emotion.

The body is a sacred garment. It’s your first and last garment; it is what you enter life in and what you depart life with, and it should be treated with honor.

I would be a giraffe because I just want to experience what a sore throat and being a giraffe feels like. It would be really uncomfortable walking around in the Sahara and being like, ‘I really need, like, 15 lozenges for my giraffe body.’

Crawl inside this body, find me where I am most ruined— love me there.

Don’t go for the booty if it kills you.

Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will ever have.