Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

Freedom of the press is to the machinery of the state what the safety valve is to the steam engine.

Reason is feminine in nature; it can only give after it has received.

Human life, like all inferior goods, is covered on the outside with a false glitter; what suffers always conceals itself.

Every child is in a way a genius; and every genius is in a way a child.

There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. ... The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say.

For, after all, the foundation of our whole nature, and, therefore, of our happiness, is our physique, and the most essential factor in happiness is health, and, next in importance after health, the ability to maintain ourselves in independence and freedom from care.