Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.

Passions destroy more prejudices than philosophy does.

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

Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one's fatherland, which is perishable?

How old the world is! I walk between two eternities.... What is my fleeting existence in comparison with that decaying rock, that valley digging its channel ever deeper, that forest that is tottering and those great masses above my head about to fall? I see the marble of tombs crumbling into dust; and yet I don't want to die!

I like better for one to say some foolish thing upon important matters than to be silent. That becomes the subject of discussion and dispute, and the truth is discovered.

One may demand of me that I should seek truth, but not that I should find it