I had been brought up in a church which decides everything and permits no doubts, so that having rejected one article of faith I was forced to reject the rest.

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.

The truths of the Scriptures are so marked and inimitable, that the inventor would be more of a miraculous character than the hero.

Liberty is obedience to the law which one has laid down for oneself

The tone of good conversation is brilliant and natural; it is neither tedious nor frivolous; it is instructive without pedantry, gay without tumultuousness, polished without affectation, gallant without insipidity, waggish without equivocation.

But in some great souls, who consider themselves as citizens of the world, and forcing the imaginary barriers that separate people from people.

I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.