The spirit of moderation should also be the spirit of the lawgiver.

Friendship is a contract in which we render small services in expectation of big ones.

The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country.

It is difficult for the united states to be all of equal power and extent.

A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.

This punishment of death is the remedy, as it were, of a sick society.

If triangles had a god, they would give him three sides.

History is full of religious wars; but, we must take care to observe, it was not the multiplicity of religions that produced these wars, it was the intolerating spirit which animated that one which thought she had the power of governing.

There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.

Men should be bewailed at their birth, and not at their death.

The crime against nature will never make any great progress in society unless people are prompted to it by some particular custom.

To lend money without interest, is certainly an action laudable and extremely good; but it is obvious, that it is only a counsel of religion, and not a civil law.

I shall be obliged to wander to the right and to the left, that I may investigate and discover the truth.

The coffee is prepared in such a way that it makes those who drink it witty: at least there is not a single soul who, on quitting the house, does not believe himself four times wittier that when he entered it.

I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve.

No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ.

The love of study is in us the only lasting passion. All the others quit us in proportion as this miserable machine which holds them approaches its ruins.

What cowardice it is to be dismayed by the happiness of others and devastated by there good fortune.

I never listen to calumnies, because if they are untrue I run the risk of being deceived, and if they be true, of hating persons not worth thinking about.

There should be weeping at a man's birth, not at his death.