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.

Nature has not got two voices, you know, one of them condemning all day what the other commands.

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.

Beauty belongs to the sphere of the simple, the ordinary, whilst ugliness is something extraordinary, and there is no question but that every ardent imagination prefers in lubricity, the extraordinary to the commonplace

The primary and most beautiful of nature's qualities is motion

Religions are the cradles of despotism.

The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind.