Now, you receive all your ideas; therefore you receive your wish, you wish therefore necessarily. The word "liberty" does not therefore belong in any way to your will....The will, therefore, is not a faculty that one can call free. A free will is an expression absolutely void of sense, and what the scholastics have called will of indifference, that is to say willing without cause, is a chimera unworthy of being combated.

It is impossible to translate poetry. Can you translate music?

Dare to think for yourself.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

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.

Truth is a fruit that can only be picked when it is very ripe.

Anyone who seeks to destroy the passions instead of controlling them is trying to play the angel.