It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.

It is only through timidity that states are lost.

Providence has given us hope and sleep as a compensation for the many cares of life.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror.

We offer up prayers to god only because we have made him after our own image. We treat him like a pasha, or a sultan, who is capable of being exasperated and appeased.

The superfluous is very necessary.