What is this world? A complex whole, subject to endless revolutions. All these revolutions show a continual tendency to destruction; a swift succession of beings who follow one another, press forward, and vanish; a fleeting symmetry; the order of a moment. I reproached you just now with estimating the perfection of things by your own capacity; and I might accuse you here of measuring its duration by the length of your own days.

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

If there were a reason for preferring the Christian religion to natural religion, it would be because the former offers us, on the nature of God and man, enlightenment that the latter lacks. Now, this is not at all the case; for Christianity, instead of clarifying, gives rise to an infinite multitude of obscurities and difficulties.

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

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

Philosophy is as far separated from impiety as religion is from fanaticism.

There is only one duty; that is to be happy.