It is a new road to happiness, if you have strength enough to castigate a little the various impulses that sway you in turn.

History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there.

Art is the response to the demand for entertainment, for the stimulation of our senses and imagination, and truth enters into it only as it subserves these ends.

Men almost universally have acknowledged providence, but that fact has had no force to destroy natural aversions and fears in the presence of events.

The primary use of conversation is to satisfy the impulse to talk.

To turn events into ideas is the function of literature.

It is pathetic to observe how lowly the motives are that religion, even the highest, attributes to the deity... To be given the best morsel, to be remembered, to be praised, to be obeyed blindly and punctiliously - these have been thought points of honor with the gods.