The passions are the winds which fill the sails of the vessel; they sink it at times, but without them it would be impossible to make way.

In France every man is either an anvil or a hammer; he is a beater or must be beaten.

Custom, law bent my first years to the religion of the happy Muslims. I see it too clearly: the care taken of our childhood forms our feelings, our habits, our belief. By the Ganges I would have been a slave of the false gods, a Christian in Paris, a Muslim here.

Every abuse ought to be reformed, unless the reform is more dangerous than the abuse itself.

The most amazing and effective inventions are not those which do most honour to the human genius.

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.

We adore, we invoke, we seek to appease, only that which we fear.