Those sciences which govern the morals of mankind, such as Theology and Philosophy, make everything their concern: no activity is so private or so secret as to escape their attention or their jurisdiction.

There is no doubt that Greek and Latin are great and handsome ornaments, but we buy them too dear.

We must reserve a back shop all our own entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.

And truly Philosophy is but sophisticated poetry. Whence do those ancient writers derive all their authority but from the poets?

It is a dangerous and fateful presumption, besides the absurd temerity that it implies, to disdain what we do not comprehend. For after you have established, according to your fine undertstanding, the limits of truth and falsehood, and it turns out that you must necessarily believe things even stranger than those you deny, you are obliged from then on to abandon these limits.

It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness.

O human creature,you are the investigator without knowledge, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and all in all, the fool of the farce.