Nature is so varied in its modes of action, so multiple in the manisftations of its power, that we have no night to set any limits to its capabilities.

If the existence of human beings leads to nothing, what is all this comedy about?

What, then, is this blue sky, which certainly does exist, and which veils from us the stars during the day?

What intelligent being, what being capable of responding emotionally to a beautiful sight, can look at the jagged, silvery lunar crescent trembling in the azure sky, even through the weakest of telescopes, and not be struck by it in an intensely pleasurable way, not feel cut off from everyday life here on Earth and transported toward that first step on celestial journeys?

That hemisphere of the moon which faces us is better known than the earth itself; its vast desert plains have been surveyed to within a few acres; its mountains and craters have been measured to within a few yards; while on the earth's surface there are 30,000,000 square kilometres (sixty times the extent of France), upon which the foot of man has never trod, which the eye of man has never seen.

Lightning is like an elementary spirit, eccentric or rational, clever or silly, passing from one extreme to the other.

The supernatural does not exist.