What is called happiness is an abstract idea, composed of various ideas of pleasure; for he who has but a moment of pleasure is not a happy man, in like manner that a moment of grief constitutes not a miserable one.

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

When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

A multitude of laws in a country is like a great number of physicians, a sign of weakness and malady.

To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.

If God did not exist, he would have to be invented.