Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.

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.

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

There is no such thing as an accident. What we call by that name is the effect of some cause which we do not see.

A yawn may not be polite, but at least it is an honest opinion.

The biggest reward for a thing well done is to have done it.

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.