The pleasure of the senses is always regulated in accordance with the imagination. Man can aspire to felicity only by serving all the whims of his imagination.

It is certainly no crime to depict the bizarre ideas that nature inspires.

I don't know what the heart is, not I: I only use the word to denote the mind's frailties.

We monsters are necessary to nature also.

What do I see in the God of that infamous sect if not an inconsistent and barbarous being, today the creator of a world of destruction he repents of tomorrow; what do I see there but a frail being forever unable to bring man to heel and force him to bend a knee. This creature, although emanated from him, dominates him, knows how to offend him and thereby merit torments eternally! What a weak fellow, this God!

Happiness is an abstraction, it is a product of the imagination, it is a way of being moved, which depends entirely on our way of seeing and feeling.

'Til the infallibility of human judgements shall have been proved to me, I shall demand the abolition of the penalty of death.