If reason be a gift of Heaven, and we can say as much of faith, Heaven has certainly made us two gifts not only incompatible, but in direct contradiction to each other. In order to solve the difficulty, we are compelled to say either that faith is a chimera or that reason is useless.

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

Fanaticism is just one step away from barbarism.

What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step towards truth.

You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, so all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals… What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to defer wise resolutions to the fiftieth or sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained.

He whom we call a gentleman is no longer the man of Nature.

Integrity is the evidence of all civil virtues.