What is faith? Is it to believe that which is evident? No. It is perfectly evident to my mind that there exists a necessary, eternal, supreme, and intelligent being. This is no matter of faith, but of reason.
Shakespeare is a drunken savage with some imagination whose plays please only in London and Canada.
Ideas are like beards; men do not have them until they grow up.
Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?
History is but the record of crimes and misfortunes. L’histoire n’est que le tableau des crimes et des malheurs.
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.
History consists of a series of accumulated imaginative inventions.
History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.
Villains are undone by what is worst in them, heroes by what is best.
The sentiment of justice is so natural, and so universally acquired by all mankind, that it seems to be independent of all law, all party, all religion.
There are two things for which animals are to be envied: they know nothing of future evils, or of what people say about them.
Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous.
Why are the Jews hated? It is the inevitable result of their laws; they either have to conquer everybody or be hated by the whole human race...
When he who hears does not know what he who speaks means, and when he who speaks does not know what he himself means, that is philosophy.
My life’s dream has been a perpetual nightmare.
It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships that they give credibility to the opinions they attack.
Men will commit atrocities as long as they believe absurdities.
Not all citizens can be equally strong; but they can all be equally free.
Time is man’s most precious asset. All men neglect it; all regret the loss of it; nothing can be done without it.
Happiness is a good that nature sells us.