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

The fact is that she was terribly undressed and I was extremely undressed too. The fact is that I still had my hand where she didn't have anything and she had hers where the same wasn't quite true of me. The fact is that I found myself underneath her and consequently she found herself on top of me.

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.

It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire.

There is no true sovereign except the nation; there can be no true legislator except the people.

If your little savage were left to himself and be allowed to retain all his ignorance, he would in time join the infant's reasoning to the grown man's passion, he would strangle his father and sleep with his mother.

Doctors are always working to preserve our health and cooks to destroy it, but the latter are the more often successful.