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

In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice.

I discuss with myself questions of politics, love, taste, or philosophy. I let my mind rove wantonly, give it free rein to followany idea, wise or mad that may present itself. My ideas are my harlots.

Passions destroy more prejudices than philosophy does.

I have only a small flickering light to guide me in the darkness of a thick forest. Up comes a theologian and blows it out.

If there are one hundred thousand damned souls for one saved soul, the devil has always the advantage without having given up his son to death.

You can be sure that a painter reveals himself in his work as much as and more than a writer does in his.