There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality.

I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.

Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.

everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure

On close inspection, we shall find that religion, and not fear, has ever been the cause of the long-lived prosperity of an absolute government.

The happy and powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of equality among men than poverty and misfortune.

I am unaware of his plans but I shall never stop believing in them because I cannot fathom them and I prefer to mistrust my own intellectual capacities than his justice.

Nations, as well as men, almost always betray the most prominent features of their future destiny in their earliest years.

A whole nation cannot rise above itself.

When justice is more certain and more mild, is at the same time more efficacious.

The whole people contracts the habits and tastes of the magistrate.

Never feel sorry for me, just teach me and watch me grow.

Life wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t supposed to be. Eternal beauty could not exist if it were not for the face of a fatal flaw.

It was a love that was not a contract but an affection of the soul.

Time is the wisest counselor of all.

The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

I think it's necessary to keep moving forward. I've always said that nostalgia is death, really for anyone creative.

In general it can be said that a nation's art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people.

The finished man, you know, is difficult to please; a growing mind will ever show you gratitude. --Faust 1, lines 182-3

I quit Paris unwillingly, because I must part from my friends; and I quit the country unwillingly, because I must part from myself.

The transformation of object-libido into narcissistic libido which thus takes place obviously implies an abandonment of sexual aims, a desexualization - a kind of sublimation, therefore.