Whenever an important event, a revolution, or a calamity turns to the profit of the church, such is always signalised as the Finger of God.

In the matter of taxation, every privilege is an injustice.

A clergyman is one who feels himself called upon to live without working at the expense of the rascals who work to live.

The superfluous is very necessary.

Luxury has been railed at for two thousand years, in verse and in prose, and it has always been loved.

History is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play upon the dead.

Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies." (Voltaire on his deathbed in response to a priest asking him that he renounce Satan.)