Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.

There is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author.

If Nature denies eternity to beings, it follows that their destruction is one of her laws. Now, once we observe that destruction is so useful to her that she absolutely cannot dispense with it from this moment onward the idea of annihilation which we attach to death ceases to be real what we call the end of the living animal is no longer a true finish, but a simple transformation, a transmutation of matter. According to these irrefutable principles, death is hence no more than a change of form, an imperceptible passage from one existence into another.

There is a kind of pleasure which comes from sacrilege or the profanation of the objects offered us for worship.

I am about to put foward some major ideas; they will be heard and pondered. If not all of them please, surely a few will; in some sort, then, I shall have contributed to the progress of our age, and shall be content.

Crime is to the passions what nervous fluid is to life: it sustains them, it supplies their strength.

You are afraid of the people unrestrained-how ridiculous!