The art of subversion, of revolution, is to dislodge established customs by probing down to their origins in order to show how they lack authority and justice.

Things are always at their best in their beginning.

Muhammad established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ by commanding his followers to lay down their lives.

Extremes are for us as if they were not, and as if we were not in regard to them; they escape from us, or we from them.

Man lives between the infinitely large and the infinitely small.

There is no arena in which vanity displays itself under such a variety of forms as in conversation.

Silence is the greatest persecution; never do the saints keep themselves silent.