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

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.

In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much.

Every person has a right to risk their own life for the preservation of it.

There is peace in dungeons, but is that enough to make dungeons desirable?

Man’s first law is to watch over his own preservation; his first care he owes to himself; and as soon as he reaches the age of reason, he becomes the only judge of the best means to preserve himself; he becomes his own master.

Trust your heart rather than your head.

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.

Nothing on this earth is worth buying at the price of human blood.

I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.

The social pact, far from destroying natural equality, substitutes, on the contrary, a moral and lawful equality for whatever physical inequality that nature may have imposed on mankind; so that however unequal in strength and intelligence, men become equal by covenant and by right.

A taste for ostentation is rarely associated in the same souls with a taste for honesty.

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.

God waits to win back his own flowers as gifts from man’s hands.

I remember really vividly kneeling by my bed as a nine-year-old, saying my prayers and asking God to give me boobs that were so big that if I laid on my back I wouldn’t be able to see my feet.

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

If you expect the blessings of God, be kind to His people.

Napoleon Bonaparte, on finding a dog beside the body of his dead master, licking his face and howling, on a moonlit field after a battle. Napoleon was haunted by this scene until his own death.

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak, and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all His laws.

If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.

I learned everything the hard way – like, literally, everything. I know that God does that to people that he has lessons for. I just wish that I had learned less extreme lessons.