The eighteenth century, a century of intellectual rather than material action, would not have succeeded in changing the laws so rapidly had it not stumbled on a suitable vehicle: the parliaments, and most notably the parliament of Paris, became the instruments of a philosophical system.

I can understand the cruel gaiety of Cervantes’s masterpiece only through a melancholy meditation: considering the whole of human existence, weighing good and evil, one might be tempted to wish for any accident that brings forgetfulness, as a means of escaping from oneself.

La douleur n'est pas une affection qu'on épuise comme le plaisir.