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

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.

People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it. It freezes you to death, and in this world you’ve got to keep your feet warm.

I like better for one to say some foolish thing upon important matters than to be silent. That becomes the subject of discussion and dispute, and the truth is discovered.

Time, matter, space – all, it may be, are no more than a point.

The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.

Whatever dressing one gives to mushrooms, to whatever sauces our Apiciuses put them, they are not really good but to be sent back to the dungheap where they are born.

You risk just as much in being credulous as in being suspicious.

There is no good father who would want to resemble our Heavenly Father.

If a misplaced admiration shows imbecility, an affected criticism shows vice of character. Expose thyself rather to appear a beast than false.

In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice.

To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.

Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.

There is no true sovereign except the nation; there can be no true legislator except the people.

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.

We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves.

What we seek to accomplish is cool, But what are we willing to sacrifice in order to make it happen!

All places where women are excluded tend downward to barbarism; but the moment she is introduced, there come in with her courtesy, cleanliness, sobriety, and order.

It’s not where you’re trying to go in life that is the problem, it’s what are you willing to leave behind in order to get there.

How does a man decide in what order to abandon his life?

One of the great conditions of anger and hatred is, that you must tell and believe lies against the hated object, in order, as we said, to be consistent.

This is one of man’s oldest riddles. How can the independence of human volition be harmonized with the fact that we are integral parts of a universe which is subject to the rigid order of nature’s laws?

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.