“In general, children, like men, and men, like children, prefer entertainment to education.”

Isn’t it better to have men being ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good?

I have not the hope of being immortal, because the desire of it has not given me that vanity.

Good music is very close to primitive language.

Anyone who takes it upon himself, on his private authority, to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones.

Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.

I am wholly yours – you are everything to me; we will sustain each other in all the ills of life it may please fate to inflict upon us; you will soothe my troubles; I will comfort you in yours.

Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.

Scepticism is the first step toward truth.

Are we not madder than those first inhabitants of the plain of Sennar? We know that the distance separating the earth from the sky is infinite, and yet we do not stop building our tower.

I discuss with myself questions of politics, love, taste, or philosophy. I let my mind rove wantonly, give it free rein to followany idea, wise or mad that may present itself. My ideas are my harlots.

When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz , one is tempted to throw away one’s books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner.

In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.

To describe women, the pen should be dipped in the humid colors of the rainbow, and the paper dried with the dust gathered from the wings of a butterfly.

Although a man may wear fine clothing, if he lives peacefully; and is good, self-possessed, has faith and is pure; and if he does not hurt any living being, he is a holy man.

Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.

If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.

And the agencies concluded that the Russians had a clear preference for President Trump.

In [The New Poetry] I had attacked the British poets’ nervous preference for gentility above all else, and their avoidance of the uncomfortable, destructive truths both of the inner life and of the present time.

I have preferred to teach my students not English literature but my love for certain authors, or, even better, certain pages, or even better than that, certain lines. One falls in love with a line, then with a page, then with an author. Well, why not? It is a beautiful process.

The degree of customization possible through your Preferences screens is awesome.

I much prefer a compliment, even if insincere, to sincere criticism.

It’s not that I succeed, it’s that everyone else has to fail, horribly, preferably in front of their parents.

My politics were those of prophylaxis, my opponents preferred those of palliation.

For serenity, always prefer the cottage to the palace!