Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one’s fatherland, which is perishable?
Isn’t it better to have men being ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good?
I can be expected to look for truth but not to find it.
Anyone who takes it upon himself, on his private authority, to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones.
Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.
If a misplaced admiration shows imbecility, an affected criticism shows vice of character. Expose thyself rather to appear a beast than false.
Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.
There are cats and cats.
There is no good father who would want to resemble our Heavenly Father.
Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.
They mistake the first manifestations of a developing sexual nature for the voice of God calling them to Himself; and it is precisely when nature is inciting them that they embrace a fashion of life contrary to nature’s wish.
What a fine comedy this world would be if one did not play a part in it.
If the weather is too cold or rainy, I take shelter in the Regence Cafe, where I entertain myself by watching chess being played. Paris is the world center, and this cafe is the Paris centre for the finest skill at this game.
When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz, one is tempted to throw away one’s books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner.
To say that man is a compound of strength and weakness, light and darkness, smallness and greatness, is not to indict him, it is to define him.
Le public ne sait pas toujours de sirer le vrai. Thepublicdoesnot alwaysknowhow todesirethetruth.
Mankind have banned the Divinity from their presence; they have relegated him to a sanctuary; the walls of the temple restrict his view; he does not exist outside of it.
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.