To busy oneself with what is futile when one can do something useful, to attend to what is simple when one has the mettle to attempt what is difficult, is to strip talent of its dignity.

A grain of poetry suffices to season a century.

Man loves liberty, even if he does not know that he loves it. He is driven by it and flees from where it does not exist.

One just principle from the depths of a cave is more powerful than an army.

Others go to bed with their mistresses; I with my ideas.

The force of passion is balanced by the force of interest.

To give one's life is a right only when one gives it unselfishly.

Every human being has within him an ideal man, just as every piece of marble contains in a rough state a statue as beautiful as the one that Praxiteles the Greek made of the god Apollo.

Fortunately, there is a sane equilibrium in the character of nations, as there is in that of men.

Freedoms, like privileges, prevail or are imperiled together You cannot harm or strive to achieve one without harming or furthering all.

He who could have been a torch and stoops to being a pair of jaws is a deserter.

He who does not see things in their depth should not call himself a radical.

In truth, men speak too much of danger.

It is a sin not to do what one is capable of doing.

It is necessary to make virtue fashionable.

It is terrible to speak of you, Liberty, for one who lives without you.

It is the duty of man to raise up man.

Love is the bond between men, the way to teach and the center of the world.

Man is a living duty, a depository of powers that he must not leave in a brute state. Man is a wing.

Men of action, above all those whose actions are guided by love, live forever.