What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

When a man is in love, jealous, and just whipped by the Inquisition, he is no longer himself.

If you have two religions in your land, the two will cut each other’s throats; but if you have thirty religions, they will dwell in peace

Liberty, then, about which so many volumes have been written is, when accurately defined, only the power of acting.

History is only the pattern of silken slippers descending the stairs to the thunder of hobnailed boots climbing upward from below.

Custom, law bent my first years to the religion of the happy Muslims. I see it too clearly: the care taken of our childhood forms our feelings, our habits, our belief. By the Ganges I would have been a slave of the false gods, a Christian in Paris, a Muslim here.

The effervescence of this fresh wine reveals the true brilliance of the French people.