“Are your convictions so fragile that mine cannot stand in opposition to them? Is your God so illusory that the presence of my Devil reveals his insufficiency?”

At all times, in every century, every age, there has been such a connection between despotism and religion that it is infinitely apparent and demonstrated a thousand times over, that in destroying one, the other must be undermined.

If the objects who serve us feel ecstacy, they are much more often concerned with themselves than with us, and our own enjoyment is consequently impaired.

For my system, which you disapprove of is also my greatest comfort in life, the source of all my happiness -it means more to me than my life itself.

My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care? A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking for others!

The debility to which Nature condemned women incontestably proves that her design is for man, who then more than ever enjoys his strength, to exercise it in all the violent forms that suit him best, by means of tortures, if he be so inclined, or worse.

What do I see in the God of that infamous sect if not an inconsistent and barbarous being, today the creator of a world of destruction he repents of tomorrow.

Lust’s passion will be served; it demands, it militates, it tyrannizes.

Nature has endowed each of us with a capacity for kindly feelings: let us not squander them on others.

For the simple reason that the first will always put the law into the service of the second.

Murder is a horror, but an often necessary horror, never criminal, which it is essential to tolerate in a republican State. Is it or is it not a crime?

It requires only two things to win credit for a miracle: a mountebank and a number of silly women.

She had already allowed her delectable lover to pluck that flower which, so different from the rose to which it is nevertheless sometimes compared, has not the same faculty of being reborn each spring.

Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.

The majority of pop stars are complete idiots in every respect.

Nothing we can do outrages Nature directly. Our acts of destruction give her new vigour and feed her energy, but none of our wreckings can weaken her power.

Let not your zeal to share your principles entice you beyond your borders.

My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.

One of the most persistent of all delusions is the conviction that the source of our dissatisfaction lies outside ourselves.

If you deliver an opinion at all, it is mere stupidity not to do it with an air of conviction and well-founded knowledge. You make it your own in uttering it, and naturally get fond of it.

My conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it.

The hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity to stand on one’s own convictions – not obstinately or defiantly

I don’t know any other way to live but to wake up everyday armed with my convictions, not yielding them to the threat of danger and to the power and force of people who might despise me.

I came then to a conviction that has never left me: that there is too much for me to attend to in this mortal life without overspeculation on the immortal, that it is not necessary to my peace of mind or to my effort to be a decent and useful person, to have a definite assurance about the affairs of the next world.

The man of character is the persistent man, the man who is faithful to his own word, his own convictions, his own affections.