"All my misfortunes come from my having had too good an opinion of myself."

"The true founder of civil society was the first man 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."

"The most ancient of all societies, and the only one that is natural, is the family."

"Civilization is a thin and precarious crust, which can be broken through at any moment by the earthquake from below."

"To live is not to breathe but to act. It is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the feeling of our existence. The man who has lived most i…"