Fanaticism is just one step away from barbarism.
At an early age I sucked up the milk of Homer, Virgil, Horace, Terence, Anacreon, Plato and Euripides, diluted with that of Moses and the prophets.
Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one’s fatherland, which is perishable?
Does anyone really know where they’re going to?
People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it. It freezes you to death, and in this world you’ve got to keep your feet warm.
Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.
What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.
It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none.
I have only a small flickering light to guide me in the darkness of a thick forest. Up comes a theologian and blows it out.
The first step towards philosophy is incredulity.
I am wholly yours – you are everything to me; we will sustain each other in all the ills of life it may please fate to inflict upon us; you will soothe my troubles; I will comfort you in yours.
Happiest are the people who give most happiness to others.
Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.
If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can’t deny a kind of respect for the great criminal.
We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves.
One declaims endlessly against the passions; one imputes all of man’s suffering to them. One forgets that they are also the source of all his pleasures.
The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population.
The fact is that she was terribly undressed and I was extremely undressed too. The fact is that I still had my hand where she didn’t have anything and she had hers where the same wasn’t quite true of me. The fact is that I found myself underneath her and consequently she found herself on top of me.
Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.
The world is the house of the strong.