A man speaks of what he knows, a woman of what pleases her: the one requires knowledge, the other taste.

Physical evils destroy themselves, or they destroy us.

No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.

There is one further distinguishing characteristic of man which is very specific indeed and about which there can be no dispute, and that is the faculty of self-improvement - a faculty which, with the help of circumstance, progressively develops all our other faculties.

Whatever may be our natural talents, the art of writing is not acquired all at once.

The social pact, far from destroying natural equality, substitutes, on the contrary, a moral and lawful equality for whatever physical inequality that nature may have imposed on mankind; so that however unequal in strength and intelligence, men become equal by covenant and by right.

That which renders life burdensome to us generally arises from the abuse of it.