There is not less wit nor invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought. Cardinal du Perron has been heard to say that the happy application of a verse of Virgil has deserved a talent.

If an historian were to relate truthfully all the crimes, weaknesses, and disorders of mankind, his readers would take his work for satire rather than for history.

It is thus tolerance that is the source of peace, and intolerance that is the source of disorder and squabbling.

It is pure illusion to think that an opinion which passes down from century to century, from generation to generation, may not be entirely false.

Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race.

One must be stark mad, to believe that mankind can subsist without magistrates.

Compulsion in the literal Sense is maliciously misrepresented, by supposing it authorizes Violences committed against the Truth. The Answer to this; by which it is prov'd, that the literal Sense does in reality authorize the stirring up Persecutions against the Cause of Truth, and that an erroneous Conscience has the same Rights as an enlighten'd Conscience.