Perfect is the enemy of good.

We offer up prayers to god only because we have made him after our own image. We treat him like a pasha, or a sultan, who is capable of being exasperated and appeased.

He who seeks truth should be of no country.

If there were no God, it would have been necessary to invent him.

In all the disputes which have excited Christians against each other, Rome has invariably decided in favor of that opinion which tended most towards the suppression of the human intellect and the annihilation of the reasoning powers.

Before receiving your instruction, I must tell you what happened to me one day. I had just had a closet built at the end of my garden. I heard a mole arguing with a cockchafer; 'Here's a fine structure,' said the mole, 'it must have been a very powerful mole who did this work.' 'You're joking,' said the cockchafer; 'it's a cockchafer full of genius who is the architect of this building.' From that moment I resolved never to argue.

Every beauty, when out of it's place, is a beauty no longer.