Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.
Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.
What good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?
Abstaining so as really to enjoy, is the epicurism, the very perfection, of reason.
I perceive God everywhere in His works. I sense Him in me; I see Him all around me.
We have to have powder for our wigs; that is why so many poor people have no bread.
Laws are always useful to those who possess and vexatious to those who have nothing.
Many men, seemingly impelled by fortune, hasten forward to meet misfortune half way.
Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.
Whatever may be our natural talents, the art of writing is not acquired all at once.
One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.
People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.
I loved too sincerely, too completely, I venture to say, to be able to be happy easily.
Christ preaches only servitude and dependence... True Christians are made to be slaves.
Generally we obtain very surely and very speedily what we are not too anxious to obtain.
That man is truly free who desires what he is able to perform, and does what he desires.
In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist.
Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.
Frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or laziness on the part of a government.
When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.
Women, in general, are not attracted to art at all, nor knowledge, and not at all to genius.
Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.
Those people who treat politics and morality separately will never understand either of them.
One must choose between making a man or a citizen, for one cannot make both at the same time.
It is in man's heart that the life of nature's spectacle exists; to see it, one must feel it.
However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.
Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.
When a man dies he clutches in his hands only that which he has given away during his lifetime.
For it is in our nature to endure patiently the decrees of fate, but not the ill-will of others.
The man is best served who has no occasion to put the hands of others at the end of his own arms.
The English think they are free. They are free only during the election of members of parliament.
There are always four sides to a story: your side, their side, the truth and what really happened.
Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?
Do you not know...that a child badly taught is farther from being wise than one not taught at all?
The taste for splendor is hardly ever combined in the same souls with the taste for the honorable.
To renounce freedom is to renounce one's humanity, one's rights as a man and equally one's duties.
A citizen should render to the state all the services he can as soon as the sovereign demands them.
It is not possible for minds degraded by a host of trivial concerns to ever rise to anything great.
The mechanism she employs is much more powerful than ours, for all her levers move the human heart.
The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.
Teach by doing whenever you can, and only fall back upon words when doing it is out of the question.
Nature wants children to be children before men... Childhood has its own seeing, thinking and feeling.
Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.
Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given to us by education.
To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.
It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.
A man speaks of what he knows, a woman of what pleases her: the one requires knowledge, the other taste.
Peter had a genius for imitation; but he lacked true genius, which is creative and makes all from nothing.
It is not our criminal actions that require courage to confess, but those which are ridiculous and foolish.
The falsification of history has done more to impede human development than any one thing known to mankind.