Virtue between men is a commerce of good actions: he who has no part in this commerce must not be reckoned.

It is the first law of friendship that it has to be cultivated. The second is to be indulgent when the first law is neglected.

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.

Our priests are not what a silly populace supposes; all their learning consists in our credulity.

He was my equal in beauty, a paragon of grace and charm, sparkling with wit, and burning with love. I adored him to distraction, to the point of idolatry: I loved him as one can never love twice.

Pleasantry is never good on serious points, because it always regards subjects in that point of view in which it is not the purpose to consider them.

What is faith? Is it to believe that which is evident? No. It is perfectly evident to my mind that there exists a necessary, eternal, supreme, and intelligent being. This is no matter of faith, but of reason.