There is no true sovereign except the nation; there can be no true legislator except the people.
His hands would plait the priest’s guts, if he had no rope, to strangle kings.
Gratitude is a burden, and every burden is made to be shaken off.
The God of the Christians is a father who makes much of his apples, and very little of his children.
Instinct guides the animal better than the man. In the animal it is pure, in man it is led astray by his reason and intelligence.
As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes.
How had they met? By chance, like everybody else. What were there names? What’s it to you? Where were they coming from? From the nearest place. Where were they going? Does anyone really know where they’re going?
It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley; but not at all so to believe or not in God.
I give my mind the liberty to follow the first wise or foolish idea that presents itself, just as in the avenue de Foy our dissolute youths follow close on the heels of some strumpet, then leave her to pursue another, attacking all of them and attaching themselves to none. My thoughts are my strumpets.
There are two public prosecutors, and one of them is at your door, punishing crimes against society; the other is nature herself. She is familiar with all those vices that escape the law.
One cannot get rid of a good education, nor, unfortunately, of a bad one, which often is such because one has not wanted to defray the expenses of a good one.
To speak to you frankly, Reader, I find that you are the more wicked of the two of us. How satisfied would I be if it were as easy for me to protect myself from your calumny as it is for you to protect yourself from the boredom or the danger of my work!
Because, without knowing what is written up above, none of us knows what we want or what we are doing, and we follow our whims which we call reason, or our reason which is often nothing but a dangerous whim which sometimes turns out well, sometimes badly.
Master, master, you obviously haven’t thought about this at all. We only ever feel sorry for ourselves, believe me.
It was ordained that you would have the title to the thing and I would have the thing itself.
And he added that prudence in no way assured us of success but consoled us and excused us in failure.
You are going to say that I am amusing myself and that because I do not know what to do with my two travellers any more, I am throwing myself into allegory, which is the usual recourse of sterile minds.
If one of them appears in company, he’s a grain of yeast which ferments and gives back to everyone some part of his natural individuality. He shakes things up. He agitates us.
How many wisely conceived projects have failed and will fail in the future! How many insane projects have succeeded and will succeed!
If it became customary to go out into the street stark naked I should not be the first nor the last to conform.
Are convents so essential to the constitution of a state? Did Jesus Christ institute monks and nuns? Can the Church really not do without them? What need has the bridegroom of so many foolish virgins, and what need has the human race of so many victims?