“Bad company is as instructive as licentiousness. One makes up for the loss of one’s innocence with the loss of one’s prejudices.”

Scepticism is the first step towards truth.

What a fine comedy this world would be if one did not play a part in it.

There are things I can’t force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.

Shakespeare’s fault is not the greatest into which a poet may fall. It merely indicates a deficiency of taste.

The best doctor is the one you run to and can’t find.

The world is the house of the strong.

Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.

Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.

Only God and some few rare geniuses can keep forging ahead into novelty.

Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.

In order to get as much fame as one’s father one has to much more able than he.

Only passions, and great passions, can raise the soul to great things. Without them there is no sublimity, either in morals or in creativity. Art returns to infancy, and virtue becomes small-minded.

Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: ‘My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.’ This stranger is a theologian.

Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.

There is only one virtue, justice; only one duty, to be happy; only one corollary, not to overvalue life and not to fear death.

Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.

During a war, news should be given out for instruction rather than information.

An instructed and intelligent people are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one.

There is precious instruction to be got by finding we were wrong.

Life doesn’t come with an instruction book; that’s why we have fathers.

If ever the church is to flourish again, one must begin by instructing the young.

If ever the church is to flourish again, one must begin by instructing the young.

If ever the church is to flourish again, one must begin by instructing the young.

As in everything, nature is the best instructor.