You despise books; you whose lives are absorbed in the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure or indolence; but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.

All the citizens of a state cannot be equally powerful, but they may be equally free

History is the lie commonly agreed upon.

There is a pleasure in not being pleased.

A good cook is a certain slow poisoner, if you are not temperate.

Heaven made virtue; man, the appearance.

If there are atheists, who is to be blamed if not the mercenary tyrants of souls who, in revolting us against their swindles, compel some feeble spirits to deny the God whom these monsters dishonour?