To doubt God is to doubt one's own conscience, and in consequence it would be to doubt everything.

One only dies once, and if one does not die well, a good opportunity is lost and will not present itself again.

When there is in nature no fixed condition, how much less must there be in the life of a people, beings endowed with mobility and movement!

How long have you been away from the country?" Laruja asked Ibarra. "Almost seven years." "Then you have probably forgotten all about it." "Quite the contrary. Even if my country does seem to have forgotten me, I have always thought about it.

But because their ancestors were men of righteousness, shall we consent to the abuses of their degenerate descendants? Because they did us a great good, would we be guilty if we prevented them from doing us evil?

No, let us not make God in our image, poor inhabitants that we are of a distant planet lost in infinite space. However brilliant and sublime our intelligence may be, it is scarcely more than a small spark which shines and in an instant is extinguished, and it alone can give us no idea of that blaze, that conflagration, that ocean of light!

To live is to be among men, and to be among men is to struggle, a struggle not only with them but with oneself; with their passions, but also with one's own.