Time, matter, space - all, it may be, are no more than a point.

I have not the hope of being immortal, because the desire of it has not given me that vanity.

I feel, I think, I judge; therefore, a part of organized matter like me is capable of feeling, thinking, and judging.

What is this world? A complex whole, subject to endless revolutions. All these revolutions show a continual tendency to destruction; a swift succession of beings who follow one another, press forward, and vanish; a fleeting symmetry; the order of a moment. I reproached you just now with estimating the perfection of things by your own capacity; and I might accuse you here of measuring its duration by the length of your own days.

Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one's fatherland, which is perishable?

The first promise exchanged by two beings of flesh was at the foot of a rock that was crumbling into dust; they took as witness for their constancy a sky that is not the same for a single instant; everything changed in them and around them, and they believed their hearts free of vicissitudes. O children! always children!

Mankind have banned the Divinity from their presence; they have relegated him to a sanctuary; the walls of the temple restrict his view; he does not exist outside of it.