There are two things for which animals are to be envied: they know nothing of future evils, or of what people say about them.

Friends should be preferred to kings.

If you wish to obtain a great name or to found an establishment, be completely mad; but be sure that your madness corresponds with the turn and temper of your age.

If we would destroy the Christian religion, we must first of all destroy man's belief in the Bible.

When his highness sends a ship to Egypt, does he trouble his head whether the mice on board are at their ease or not?

He who is involved in ecstasies and visions, who takes dreams for reality, and his own imagination for prophesy, is a fanatical novice of great hope and promise, and will soon advance to the higher stage and kill men for the love of God.

There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics. ... We repeat, there was far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer.