True power and true politeness are above vanity.

People must have renounced, it seems to me, all natural intelligence to dare to advance that animals are but animated machines.... It appears to me, besides, that such people can never have observed with attention the character of animals, not to have distinguished among them the different voices of need, of suffering, of joy, of pain, of love, of anger, and of all their affections. It would be very strange that they should express so well what they could not feel.

No one is ignorant that our character and turn of mind are intimately connected with the water-closet.

Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively.

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.

I never approved either the errors of his book, or the trivial truths he so vigorously laid down. I have, however, stoutly taken his side when absurd men have condemned him for these same truths.

If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities.