I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker.

The passions are the winds which fill the sails of the vessel; they sink it at times, but without them it would be impossible to make way.

All pleasantry should be short; and it might even be as well were the serious short also.

Life is thickly sown with thorns. I know no other remedy than to pass rapidly over them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is their power to harm us.

We admit, in geometry, not only infinite magnitudes, that is to say, magnitudes greater than any assignable magnitude, but infinite magnitudes infinitely greater, the one than the other. This astonishes our dimension of brains, which is only about six inches long, five broad, and six in depth, in the largest heads.

Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.