Does not vanity itself cease to be blamable, is it not even ennobled, when it is directed to laudable objects, when it confines itself to prompting us to great and generous actions?

Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.

If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.

The world is the house of the strong. I shall not know until the end what I have lost or won in this place, in this vast gambling den where I have spent more than sixty years, dice box in hand, shaking the dice.

Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.

It is raining bombs on the house of the Lord. I go in fear and trembling lest one of these terrible bombers gets into difficulties.

We swallow with one gulp the lie that flatters us, and drink drop by drop the truth which is bitter to us.