“Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.”

“Democratic and aristocratic states are not in their own nature free. Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments; and even in these it is not always found. It is there only when t...”

“I have never known any distress that an hours reading did not relieve.”

“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.”

“In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.”

“Virtue has need of limits.”

“In vain do we seek tranquility in the desert; temptations are always with us; our passions, represented by the demons, never let us alone: those monsters created by the heart, those illusions produ...”

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect fo...”

“Of all the bright cruel lies they tell you, the cruelest is the one called love.”

“Don't cry, I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is.”

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”

“If I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and t...”

“I'm an Earth ecstatic, and my creed is simple: All life is sacred, life loves life, and we are capable of improving our behavior toward one another. As basic as that is, for me it's also tonic and ...”