However much we may feel for the misery of someone close to us, we always act with some artificiality in their presence. We hold-back from telling them everything we think, often because we do not genuinely mean what we say; or because we take a pleasure in their plight, thankful that we are not affected.

What, then is truth?... Truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are.

Historical refutation as the definitive refutation.- In former times, one sought to prove that there is no God - today one indicates how the belief that there is a God arose and how this belief acquired its weight and importance: a counter-proof that there is no God thereby becomes superfluous.- When in former times one had refuted the 'proofs of the existence of God' put forward, there always remained the doubt whether better proofs might not be adduced than those just refuted: in those days atheists did not know how to make a clean sweep.

Nothing ever succeeds which exuberant spirits have not helped to produce.

An important species of pleasure, and therewith the source of morality, arises out of habit.

Where do your greatest dangers lie?--In pity.

The hypocrite who always plays one and the same part ceases at last to be a hypocrite.