“There is only one duty; that is to be happy.”

The Christian religion teaches us to imitate a God that is cruel, insidious, jealous, and implacable in his wrath.

There’s a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.

The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.

Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.

Mankind have banned the Divinity from their presence; they have relegated him to a sanctuary; the walls of the temple restrict his view; he does not exist outside of it.

It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.

If there are one hundred thousand damned souls for one saved soul, the devil has always the advantage without having given up his son to death.

I have only a small flickering light to guide me in the darkness of a thick forest. Up comes a theologian and blows it out.

The bad gives rise to the good, the good inspires the better, the better produces the excellent, the excellent is followed by the bizarre

Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.

What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.

Integrity is the evidence of all civil virtues.

First move me, astonish me, break my heart, let me tremble, weep, stare, be enraged-only then regale my eyes.

If ever anybody dedicated his whole life to the “enthusiasm for truth and justice” using this phrase in the good sense it was Diderot.

There is less harm to be suffered in being mad among madmen than in being sane all by oneself.

Doctors are always working to preserve our health and cooks to destroy it, but the latter are the more often successful.

Never love someone just to replace the one you loved.

The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.

One shouldn’t be too inquisitive in life Either about God’s secrets or one’s wife.

Trains, like time and tide, stop for no one.

Before all masters, necessity is the one most listened to, and who teaches the best.

The reason we have few friends in adversity, is, because we have no true ones in prosperity.

We see that science is eminently perfectible, and that each theory has constantly to give way to a fresh one.

One cannot violate the promptings of one’s nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.