C est le tyran qui m outrage, et non pas celui qui exerce la tyrannie - Montesquieu

One more organ or one less in our body would give us a different intelligence. In fact, all the established laws as to why our body is a certain way would be different if our body were not that way.

Nature, in her wisdom, seems to have arranged it so that men's stupidities should be ephemeral, and books make them immortal. A fool ought to be content with having exasperated everyone around him, but he insists on tormenting future generations; he wants his foolishness to overcome the oblivion which he might have enjoyed like a tomb; he wants posterity to be informed that he existed, and to be aware for ever that he was a fool.

The good sense and happiness of individuals largely consists in their having middling talents and fortunes. If a republic whose laws have formed many middling people is composed of sober people, it will be governed soberly; if it is composed of happy people, it will be very happy.