Conscience is the voice of the soul; the passions are the voice of the body

Leave those vain moralists, my friend, and return to the depth of your soul: that is where you will always rediscover the source of the sacred fire which so often inflamed us with love of the sublime virtues; that is where you will see the eternal image of true beauty, the contemplation of which inspires us with a holy enthusiasm.

A feeble body weakens the mind.

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.