There is a period in life when we go backwards as we advance.
It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.
Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?
Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education. .. We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education.
God made me and broke the mold.
Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.
A man says what he knows, a woman says what will please.
Many men, seemingly impelled by fortune, hasten forward to meet misfortune half way.
The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.
The bigger a state becomes the more liberty diminishes.
Trust your heart rather than your head.
The one thing we do not know is the limit of the knowable.
You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.
We can never put ourselves in the shoes of children; we cannot fathom their thoughts, we lend them ours; and always following ourown reasoning, we stuff their heads with extravagance and error.
Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.
Not all the subtilties of metaphysics can make me doubt a moment of the immortality of the soul, and of a beneficent Providence. I feel it, I believe it, I desire it, I hope it, and will defend it to my last breath.
Christ preaches only servitude and dependence... True Christians are made to be slaves.
A paralyzed man who wants to walk OR an agile man who does not want to walk will both remain neutral in nature.
There is no subjection so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom.
We are reduced to asking others what we are. We never dare to ask ourselves.
Smell is the sense of memory and desire.
We cannot work for others without working for ourselves.
Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world, but degenerates once it gets into the hands of man
Luxury either comes of riches or makes them necessary; it corrupts at once rich and poor, the rich by possession and the poor by covetousness.
The greatest braggarts are usually the biggest cowards.
It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.
When a man dies he clutches in his hands only that which he has given away during his lifetime.
Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.
Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.
Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like.
All through life a man has need of a counsellor and guide.
Temperance and labor are the two real physicians of man.
By doing good we become good.
It is hard to prevent oneself from believing what one so keenly desires.
Supreme happiness consists in self-content.
Laws are always useful to those who possess and vexatious to those who have nothing.
We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man's estate, is the gift of education.
The mind grows narrow in proportion as the soul grows corrupt.
Do you not know...that a child badly taught is farther from being wise than one not taught at all?
I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.
There are always four sides to a story: your side, their side, the truth and what really happened.
The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.
Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.
All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.
In a well governed state, there are few punishments, not because there are many pardons, but because criminals are rare; it is when a state is in decay that the multitude of crimes is a gaurantee of impunity.
Money is the seed of money.
Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.
Cities are the abyss of the human species.
Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.
People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.
Do not judge, and you will never be mistaken.
I have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described.
In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist.
The happiest is he who suffers least; the most miserable is he who enjoys least.
Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. Is it astonishing that often these two languages contradict each other, and then to which must we listen? Too often reason deceives us; we have only too much acquired the right of refusing to listen to it; but conscience never deceives us; it is the true guide of man; it is to man what instinct is to the body; which follows it, obeys nature, and never is afraid of going astray.
The money you have gives you freedom; the money you pursue enslaves you.
I may be no better, but at least I am different.
I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.
Love childhood, indulge its sports, its pleasures, its delightful instincts. Who has not sometimes regretted that age when laughter was ever on the lips, and when the heart was ever at peace?
The falsification of history has done more to impede human development than any one thing known to mankind.
If I am part of a group of 100 people, do 99 people have the right to sentence me to death, just because they are majority?
I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.
People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little. It is plain that an ignorant person thinks everything he does know important, and he tells it to everybody. But a well-educated man is not so ready to display his learning; he would have too much to say, and he sees that there is much more to be said, so he holds his peace.
Had I no other proof of the immortality of the soul than the oppression of the just and the triumph of the wicked in this world, this alone would prevent my having the least doubt of it. So shocking a discord amidst a general harmony of things would make me naturally look for a cause; I should say to myself we do not cease to exist with this life; everything reassumes its order after death.
All kinds of frankness and honesty are terrible crimes in the eyes of society.
Freedom is the power to choose our own chains
Teach by doing whenever you can, and only fall back upon words when doing it is out of the question.
No one is happy unless he respects himself.
Liberty may be gained, but can never be recovered.
Our greatest misfortunes come to us from ourselves.
Do not base your life on the judgments of others; first, because they are as likely to be mistaken as you are, and further, because you cannot know that they are telling you their true thoughts.
Posterity is always just.
Innocence is ashamed of nothing.
No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.
Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity.
Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them.
The world is the book of women. Whatever knowledge they may possess is more commonly acquired by observation than by reading.
I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.
Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.
To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness.
The man who gets the most out of life is not the one who has lived it longest, but the one who has felt life most deeply.
Ruthless man: you begin by slaying the animal and then you devour it, as if to slay it twice. It is not enough. You turn against the dead flesh, it revolts you, it must be transformed by fire, boiled and roasted, seasoned and disguised with drugs; you must have butchers, cooks, turnspits, men who will rid the murder of its horrors, who will dress the dead bodies so that the taste decieved by these disguises will not reject what is strange to it, and will feast on corpses, the very sight of which would sicken you.
Great men never make bad use of their superiority. They see it and feel it and are not less modest. The more they have, the more they know their own deficiencies.
Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.
What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?
Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.
Nature wants children to be children before men... Childhood has its own seeing, thinking and feeling.
People in their natural state are basically good. But this natural innocence,however, is corrupted by the evils of society.
One can buy anything with money except morality.
Socrates dies with honor, surrounded by his disciples listening to the most tender words -the easiest death that one could wish to die. Jesus dies in pain, dishonor, mockery, the object of universal cursing - the most horrible death that one could fear. At the receipt of the cup of poison, Socrates blesses him who could not give it to him without tears; Jesus, while suffering the sharpest pains, prays for His most bitter enemies. If Socrates lived and died like a philosopher, Jesus lived and died like a god.
Quit thy childhood, my friend, and wake up!
The animals you eat are not those who devour others; you do not eat the carnivorous beasts, you take them as your pattern. You only hunger for the sweet and gentle creatures which harm no one, which follow you, serve you, and are devoured by you as the reward of their service.
Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.
I love idleness. I love to busy myself about trifles, to begin a hundred things and not finish one of them, to come and go as my fancy bids me, to change my plan every moment, to follow a fly in all its circlings, to try and uproot a rock to see what is underneath, eagerly to begin a ten-years' task to give it up after ten minutes: in short, to fritter away the whole day inconsequentially and incoherently, and to follow nothing but the whim of the moment.
The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man.
Social man lives constantly outside himself.
The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had some one pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: "Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!
Education is either from nature, from man or from things. The developing of our faculties and organs is the education of nature; that of man is the application we learn to make of this very developing; and that of things is the experience we acquire in regard to the different objects by which we are affected. All that we have not at our birth, and that we stand in need of at the years of maturity, is the gift of education.
Living is not breathing but doing.
The science of government is only a science of combinations, of applications, and of exceptions, according to times, places and circumstances.
I have never believed that man's freedom consisted in doing what he wants, but rather in never doing what he does not want to do.
In all the ills that befall us, we are more concerned by the intention than the result. A tile that falls off a roof may injure us more seriously, but it will not wound us so deeply as a stone thrown deliberately by a malevolent hand. The blow may miss, but the intention always strikes home.
The people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived.
My liveliest delight was in having conquered myself.
The freedom of Mankind does not lie in the fact that can do what we want, but that we do not have to do that which we do not want.
Whence do I get my rules of conduct? I find them in my heart. Whatever I feel to be good is good. Whatever I feel to be evil is evil. Conscience is the best of casuists.
Reason deceives us; conscience, never.
Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.
I perceive God everywhere in His works. I sense Him in me; I see Him all around me.
Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.
Anticipation and Hope are born twins.
Those people who treat politics and morality separately will never understand either of them.
Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.
Temperance and labor are the two best physicians of man; labor sharpens the appetite, and temperance prevents from indulging to excess
I have suffered too much in this world not to hope for another.
It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.
A man speaks of what he knows, a woman of what pleases her: the one requires knowledge, the other taste.
If there wasn't a God we would have to invent one to keep people sane.
It is manifestly contrary to the law of nature, however defined, that a handful of people should gorge themselves with superfluities while the hungry majority goes in need of necessities.
Patience patience quotes is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
A feeble body weakens the mind.
Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.
Girls must be thwarted early in life.
The only moral lesson which is suited for a child--the most important lesson for every time of life--is this: 'Never hurt anybody.
Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.
