The fawning courtier and the surly squire often mean the same thing,--each his own interest.

So long as I confine my thoughts to my own ideas divested of words, I do not see how I can be easily mistaken.

Of all men living [priests] are our greatest enemies. If it were possible, they would extinguish the very light of nature, turn the world into a dungeon, and keep mankind for ever in chains and darkness.

But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine trees, for instance, in a park [. . .] and nobody by to perceive them. [...] The objects of sense exist only when they are perceived; the trees therefore are in the garden [. . .] no longer than while there is somebody by to perceive them.

How often must I repeat, that I know or am conscious of my own being; and that I myself am not my ideas, but somewhat else, a thinking, active principle that perceives, knows, wills, and operates about ideas?

God is a being of transcendent and unlimited perfections: his nature therefore is incomprehensible to finite spirits.

[Christianity] neither enjoins the nastiness of the Cynic, nor the insensibility of the Stoic.