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.

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

No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.

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

My ideas are my whores.

There is less harm to be suffered in being mad among madmen than in being sane all by oneself.

Isn't it better to have men being ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good?