A true philosopher is like an elephant; he never puts the second foot down until the first one is solidly in place.

To despise theory is to have the excessively vain pretension to do without knowing what one does, and to speak without knowing what one says.

It is the passions that do and undo everything.

Our sun enlightens the planets that belong to him; why may not every fixed star also have planets to which they give light?

There are three things I have loved but never understood. Art, music and women.

A work of morality, politics, criticism will be more elegant, other things being equal, if it is shaped by the hand of geometry.

I hate war, for it spoils conversation.