The establishment of a society for the encouragement of arts will produce great benefits before they are perverted to mischiefs.

He would be a very absurd legislator who should pretend to set bounds to his country's welfare, lest it should perish by knowing no bounds.

Pictures may serve as helps to religion but are only an appendix to idolatry, for the people must be taught to believe in false gods and in the power of saints before they will learn to worship their images.

When a Frenchman reads of the garden of Eden, I do not doubt but he concludes it was something approaching to that of Versailles, with clipped hedges, berceaus, and trellis work.

In all science, error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last.

One’s mind suffers only when one is young and while one is ignorant of the world. When one has lived for some time, one learns that the young think too little and the old too much, and one grows careless about both.

I avoid talking before the youth of the age as I would dancing before them: for if one’s tongue don’t move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule.

Men are often capable of greater things than they perform – They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent.

This is a bad world; nor have I had cause to leave it with regret.

Oh that I were seated as high as my ambition, I’d place my naked foot on the necks of monarchs.