If we refuse our homage to statues and frigid images, the very counterpart of their dead originals, with which hawks, and mice, and spiders are so well acquainted, does it not merit praise instead of penalty [Christians were punished for not worshiping Roman gods] that we have rejected what we have come to see is error? We cannot surely be made out to injure those whom we are certain are nonentities. What does not exist is in its nonexistence secure from suffering.

Can we not live without pleasure, who cannot but with pleasure die?

Hope is patience with the lamp lit.

It is to believed because it is absurd.

He is a man, who is to be a man; the fruit is always present in the seed.

I believe because it is absurd.

There is strife between God s ways and human ways; damned by you, we are absolved by God.