We talk of wild animals, but the wildest animal is man.

For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.

To be simple is the best thing in the world.

The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.

Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence.

According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it.

I have myself a poetical enthusiasm for pigs, and the paradise of my fancy is one where pigs have wings. But it is only men, especially wise men, who discuss whether pigs can fly; we have no particular proof that pigs ever discuss it.