“Man’s first law is to watch over his own preservation; his first care he owes to himself; and as soon as he reaches the age of reason, he becomes the only judge of the best means to preserve himself; he becomes his own master.”

There is no evildoer who could not be made good for something.

My birth was my first misfortune.

I perceive God everywhere in His works. I sense Him in me; I see Him all around me.

The people of England regards itself as free; but it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing.

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

If we assume man has been corrupted by an artificial civilization, what is the natural state? the state of nature from which he has been removed? imagine, wandering up and down the forest without industry, without speech, and without home.

Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity.

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

But in some great souls, who consider themselves as citizens of the world, and forcing the imaginary barriers that separate people from people.

I may be no better, but at least I am different.

The imagination which causes so many ravages among us, never speaks to the heart of savages.

To do is to be.

The sociable man, always outside himself, is capable of living only in the opinions of others and, so to speak, derives the sentiment of his own existence solely from their judgment.

If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates; the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires?

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.

To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness.

Everyone desires long life, not one old age.

A knowledge of the true age of the Earth and of the fossil record makes it impossible for any balanced intellect to believe in the literal truth of every part of the Bible in the way that fundamentalists do.

Already for thirty-five years he had not stopped talking and almost nothing of fundamental value had emerged.

Female beauties are as fickle in their faces as in their minds; though casualties should spare them, age brings in a necessity of decay.

We of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.

Port is not for the very young, the vain and the active. It is the comfort of age and the companion of the scholar and the philosopher.