Our first ideas of life are generally taken from fiction rather than fact.

Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.

Religion is the metaphysics of the masses.

There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.

We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.

Women remain children all their lives, for they always see only what is near at hand, cling to the present, take the appearance of a thing for reality, and prefer trifling matters to the most important.

In reading, the mind is, in fact, only the playground of another's thoughts.