"Providence has given us hope and sleep as a compensation for the many cares of life."

"What can be more absurd than choosing to carry a burden that one really wants to throw to the ground? To detest, and yet to strive to preserve our existence? To caress the serpent that devours us and hug him close to our bosoms tillhe has gnawed into our hearts?"

"Mankind have a little corrupted nature, for they were not born wolves, and they have become wolves; God has given them neither cannon of four-and-twenty pounders, nor bayonets; and yet they have made cannon and bayonets to destroy one another."

"Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats."

"He showed, in a few words, that it is not sufficient to throw together a few incidents that are to be met with in every romance, and that to dazzle the spectator the thought should be new, without being farfetched; frequently sublime, but always natural; the author should have a thorough knowledge of the human heart and make it speak properly; he should be a complete poet, without showing an affectation of it in any of the characters of his piece; he should be a perfect master of his language, speak it with all its pruity and with the utmost harmony, and yet so as not to make the sense a slave to the rhyme. Whoever, added he, neglects any one of these rules, though he may write two or three tragedies with tolerable success, will never be reckoned in the number of good authors."

"Speaking of Newton but also commenting more broadly on education and the Enlightenment: "I have seen a professor of mathematics only because he was great in his vocation, buried like a king who had done well by his subjects."

"Better is the enemy of good."

"Often the prudent far from making their destinies succumb to them."

"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong."

"I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom."

"Business is the salt of life."

"I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one's very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?"

"What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking."

"I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

"What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy."

"It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it."

"Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly."

"If God made us in his image we have certainly returned the compliment."

"The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs."

"Nature has always had more force than education."

"Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us."

"What can you say to a man who tells you he prefers obeying God rather than men, and that as a result he's certain he'll go to heaven if he cuts your throat?"

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."

"I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil."

"Man is free at the moment he wishes to be."

"The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing."

"The punishment of criminals should be of use when a man is hanged he is good for nothing."

"The ear is the avenue to the heart."

"Religion was instituted to make us happy in this life and in the other. What must we do to be happy in the life to come? Be just."

"A true god surely cannot have been born of a girl, nor died on the gibbet, nor be eaten in a piece of dough... [or inspired] books, filled with contradictions, madness, and horror."

"History should be written as philosophy."

"Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too."

"You are very harsh.''I have seen the world."

"By what incomprehensible mechanism are our organs held in subjection to sentiment and thought? How is it that a single melancholy idea shall disturb the whole course of the blood; and that the blood should in turn communicate irregularities to the human understanding? What is that unknown fluid which certainly exists and which, quicker and more active than light, flies in less than the twinkling of an eye into all the channels of life,-produces sensations, memory, joy or grief, reason or frenzy,-recalls with horror what we would choose to forget; and renders a thinking animal, either a subject of admiration, or an object of pity and compassion?"

"The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice."

"It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge."

"Fear follows crime and is its punishment."

"It is said that the present is pregnant with the future."

"Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce."

"If we do not find anything very pleasant, at least we shall find something new."

"Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy."

"An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination."

"My dear young lady, when you are in love, and jealous, and have been flogged by the Inquisition, there's no knowing what you may do."

"The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days."

"Froth at the top dregs at bottom but the middle excellent."

"Don't think money does everything or you are going to end up doing everything for money."

"Tears are the silent language of grief."

"Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable."

"The Dutch fetishes who converted me tell me every Sunday that the blacks and whites are all children of one father, whom they call Adam. As for me, I do not understand anything of genealogies; but if what these preachers say is true, we are all second cousins; and you must allow that it is impossible to be worse treated by our relations than we are."

"I assert nothing, I content myself with believing that more is possible than people think."