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

A nation which thinks that it is belief in God and not good law which makes people honest does not seem to me very advanced.

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!

I am more affected by the attractions of virtue than by the deformities of vice; I turn gently away from the wicked and I fly to meet the good. If there is in a literary work, in a character, in a picture, in a statue, a beautiful spot, that is where my eyes rest; I see only that, I remember only that, all the rest is well-nigh forgotten. What becomes of me when the whole work is beautiful!

There's a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.

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.

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