"Morality is everywhere the same for all men, therefore it comes from God; sects differ, therefore they are the work of men."

"Faith is believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe."

"Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little to cure diseases of which they know less in human beings of whom they know nothing."

"Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts."

"Wisdom must yield to superstition's rules,Who arms with bigot zeal the hand of fools."

"To hold a pen is to be at war."

"What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature."

"The man who, in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today, would have wished to live had he waited a week."

"He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it."

"God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere."

"We are intelligent beings: intelligent beings cannot have been formed by a crude, blind, insensible being: there is certainly some difference between the ideas of Newton and the dung of a mule. Newton's intelligence, therefore, came from another intelligence."

"Many are destined to reason wrongly others not to reason at all: and others to persecute those who do reason."

"A good imitation is the most perfect originality."

"Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them."

"The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood."

"Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound."

"Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool."

"If you want good laws, burn those you have and make new ones."

"Society therefore is an ancient as the world."

"The heart has its own reasons that reason can't understand."

"Fear succeeds crime - it is its punishment."

"England has forty-two religions and only two sauces."

"I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms."

"When we hear news we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation."

"Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want."

"Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense."

"Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom."

"Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time."

"It is not improbable that in hot countries, monkeys may have enslaved girls."

"If there had been a censorship of the press in Rome we should have had today neither Horace nor Juvenal nor the philosophical writings of Cicero."

"I hate women because they always know where things are."

"Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies."(Voltaire on his deathbed in response to a priest asking him that he renounce Satan.)"

"Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts."

"God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh."

"God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well."

"Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste."

"Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another."

"Quand celui à qui l'on parle ne comprend pas et celui qui parle ne se comprend pas, c'est de la métaphysique. When he to whom a person speaks does not understand, and he who speaks does not understand himself, that is metaphysics."

"We never live; we are always in the expectation of living."

"The Jews are an ignorant and barbarous people, who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched."

"Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity."

"When men do not have healthy notions of the Divinity, false ideas supplant them, just as in bad times one uses counterfeit money when there is no good money."

"You despise books; you whose lives are absorbed in the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure or indolence; but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books."

"God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere."

"Do well and you will have no need for ancestors."

"Perhaps there is nothing greater on earth than the sacrifice of youth and beauty, often of high birth, made by the gentle sex in order to work in hospitals for the relief of human misery, the sight of which is so revolting to our delicacy. Peoples separated from the Roman religion have imitated but imperfectly so generous a charity."

"He who thinks himself wise O heavens! is a great fool."

"Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien. (The perfect is the enemy of the good.)"

"The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year."

"Such is the feebleness of humanity, such is its perversity, that doubtless it is better for it to be subject to all possible superstitions, as long as they are not murderous, than to live without religion."