It is not possible for minds degraded by a host of trivial concerns to ever rise to anything great.

A citizen should render to the state all the services he can as soon as the sovereign demands them.

Being wealthy isn't just a question of having lots of money. It's a question of what we want. Wealth isn't an absolute, it's relative to desire. Every time we seek something that we can't afford, we can be counted as poor, how much money we may actually have.

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

Liberty is obedience to the law which one has laid down for oneself.

Abstaining so as really to enjoy, is the epicurism, the very perfection, of reason.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

Conscience is the voice of the soul; the passions of the body.

I have entered on an enterprise which is without precedent, and will have no imitator. I propose to show my fellows a man as nature made him, and this man shall be myself.