To betray your country you must have an incredibly low soul.
He who does good to others is good; he who does harm to others is evil. If we unite these simple truths in a conclusion we will have: "a man is only good when, for his own good, he does things pleasing to others; a man is evil when he pleases himself by causing trouble to other people."
Goodness and rationality are two essentially identical terms: what is good from the theoretical point of view of rationality is also good from a practical point of view, and vice versa - what is good is inevitably also rational.
Good is a high degree of benefit, and it is like a very useful benefit.
If civic motives are excluded from my circle of observation, from my sphere of action, what is left for me to investigate? What is left for me to participate in? It remains only a tedious muddle of various people with personal concerns about the pocket, the stomach or the amusements.
Life is so vast and multifaceted that man will always find in it what his strongest need demands.
Health can never lose its value in the eyes of man, because it is bad to live in comfort and luxury without being healthy.
Knowledge begets love: the more you know science, the more you love it.
Everyone knows that if husband and wife live in good understanding and happiness, then their common affection increases every year, and finally develops to such an extent that "they cannot live without each other."
He who is satisfied with everything does nothing good because goodness is impossible without the rejection of evil.
He who has not studied man will never know men deeply.
When it comes to forceful measures to prevent damage, it goes without saying that you cannot prevent a small damage by causing a larger one.
He who has not felt how love provokes all the forces of man, does not know true love.
Personal happiness is not possible without the happiness of others.
It is better for man not to develop, than to develop without the influence of thought on public concerns, without the influence of feelings determined by participation in these concerns.
People flatter to lead under the guise of submission.
Youth is the period of freshness of noble feelings.
We are fascinated by anything that manifests our ideal, the goal and object of our desires and love.
Our civilization is only in its infancy, and we cannot imagine, even in the wildest form of imagination, to what power over nature it will lead us.
Education not only gives man wealth and strength: it also gives man spiritual pleasure, to which nothing compares. Every educated man realizes this, and will always admit that without education his life would have been very dull and miserable.
There is no need to prove that education is the greatest happiness for man. Without education, people are also rude and poor and unhappy.
It is absurd to take up a thing, when you do not have enough strength for it. You will spoil that thing and your deed will appear as villainy.
You cannot but want to understand the pettiness of the will of one who lives in society, without any aspiration except for small daily calculations.
No external compulsion can keep a man either at the height of reason or at that of morality, when he himself does not wish to keep himself there.
No situation justifies inaction; we can always do something that is not completely useless, we must always do everything that can be done.
Man has never yet achieved anything great without enthusiasm and fervent devotion.
It is little to have only honesty, to be just and useful; a consistency of ideas is also needed.
Opera is the most complete form of music as art.
To reject progress is as absurd as to reject the force of free fall.
The patriot is a man who serves the country, and the country is first of all the people.