 Whoever serves his country well has no need of ancestors. |
| The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. |
| I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow. |
| In this country it is a good thing to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others. |
| I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil. |
| Injustice in the end produces independence. |
| It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. |
| Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes. |
| Tears are the silent language of grief. |
| It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge. |
| History should be written as philosophy. |
| What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking. |
| The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it. |
| Froth at the top, dregs at bottom, but the middle excellent. |
| Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law. |
| By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property. |
| Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes. |
| Anyone who seeks to destroy the passions instead of controlling them is trying to play the angel. |
| The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination. |
| Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy. |
