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

Are your convictions so fragile that mine cannot stand in opposition to them? Is your God so illusory that the presence of my Devil reveals his insufficiency?

Your body is the church where Nature asks to be reverenced.

Prejudice is the sole author of infamies: how many acts are so qualified by an opinion forged out of naught but prejudice!

My passions, concentrated on a single point, resemble the rays of a sun assembled by a magnifying glass: they immediately set fire to whatever object they find in their way.

Those laws, being forged for universal application, are in perpetual conflict with personal interest, just as personal interest is always in contradiction with the general interest. Good for society, our laws are very bad for the individuals whereof it is composed; for, if they one time protect the individual, they hinder, trouble, fetter him for three quarters of his life.

Every principle is a judgment, every judgment the outcome of experience, and experience is only acquired by the exercise of the senses . . .