You risk just as much in being credulous as in being suspicious.

Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man.

It is not the man who is beside himself, but he who is cool and collected,--who is master of his countenance, of his voice, of his actions, of his gestures, of every part of his play,--who can work upon others at his pleasure.

Those authors into whose hands nature has placed a magic wand, with which they no sooner touch us than we forget the unhappiness in life, than the darkness leaves our soul, and we are reconciled to existence, should be placed among the benefactors of the human race.

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.

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

The man who first pronounced the barbarous word God ought to have been immediately destroyed.