Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad.

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.

Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.

Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.

All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.

It may easily come to pass that a vain man may become proud and imagine himself pleasing to all when he is in reality a universal nuisance.

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

Nature has no goal in view, and final causes are only human imaginings.

Self-complacency is pleasure accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.

Indulge yourself in pleasures only in so far as they are necessary for the preservation of health.

When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.

God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.

We feel and know that we are eternal.

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.

Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the reach and power of every man. Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one’s self.

Pride is pleasure arising from a man’s thinking too highly of himself.

We must take care not to admit as true anything, which is only probable. For when one falsity has been let in, infinite others follow.

The holy word of God is on everyone‘s lips…but…we see almost everyone presenting their own versions of God’s word, with the sole purpose of using religion as a pretext for making others think as they do.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts.

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter.

The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.

Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.