The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude.

The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.

Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.

Happiness is not the portion of man.

Superstition sets the whole world in flames, but philosophy douses them.

If God did not exist, He would have to be invented. But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it.

Theological religion is the source of all imaginable follies and disturbances. It is the parent of fanaticism and civil discord; it is the enemy of mankind.