Gentleness and peacefulness regulate our proceedings; theirs are dictated by fury. We employ reason, they accumulate faggots. They preach nothing but love, and breathe nothing but blood. Their words are humane, but their hearts are cruel.

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!

What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.

Only the bad man is alone.

Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.

There is only one virtue, justice; only one duty, to be happy; only one corollary, not to overvalue life and not to fear death.

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