What is madness? To have erroneous perceptions and to reason correctly from them.

I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc. It does not behoove us, who were only savages and barbarians when these Indians and Chinese peoples were civilized and learned, to dispute their antiquity.

Your destiny is that of a man, your vows those of a god.

Anyone who seeks to destroy the passions instead of controlling them is trying to play the angel.

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

What! Have you no monks to teach, to dispute, to govern, to intrigue and to burn people who do not agree with them?

It was decided by the university of Coimbre that the sight of several persons being slowly burned in great ceremony is an infallible secret for preventing earthquakes.