Whilst no people appears in history without the sign and palladium of a positive faith, without temple, altar, priesthood--that is to say, without a constituted religion--unbelief appears only under an individual form, sometimes proscribed, sometimes tolerated, seldom powerful, and never becoming established as the public and social expression of a nation.

The mind sees, the will commands, the man acts. What is it then to act? To act is to produce something. If you have produced nothing--if no result has been the fruit of your will, you have done nothing.

Wherever God is adored, he is adored in virtue of a supernatural doctrine; wherever he is despised, he is despised in the name of nature and reason.

The great men of antiquity were poor.

There is nothing fruitful except sacrifice.

The universe shows us the life of God, or rather it is in itself the life of God. We behold in it his permanent action, the scene upon which his power is exercised, and in which all his attributes are reflected. God is not out of the universe any more than the universe is out of God. God is the principle, the universe is the consequence, but a necessary consequence, without which the principle would be inert, unfruitful, impossible to conceive.

Prophecy, that universal and perpetual torch by which faith is enlightened.