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.

If the weather is too cold or rainy, I take shelter in the Regence Cafe, where I entertain myself by watching chess being played. Paris is the world center, and this cafe is the Paris centre for the finest skill at this game.

Scepticism is the first step towards truth.

To describe women, the pen should be dipped in the humid colors of the rainbow, and the paper dried with the dust gathered from the wings of a butterfly.

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.

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