“The highest praise of God consists in the denial of him by the atheist who finds creation so perfect that it can dispense with a creator.”

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way.

Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible.

It is not because other people are dead that our affection for them grows faint, it is because we ourselves are dying.

We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.

To write that essential book, a great writer does not need to invent it but merely to translate it, since it already exists in each one of us. The duty and task of a writer are those of translator.

Only by art can we get outside ourselves, instead of seeing only one world, our own, we see it under multiple forms.

Just as those who practice the same profession recognize each other instinctively, so do those who practice the same vice.

Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade.

People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep one foot on the ground.

It is often hard to bear the tears that we ourselves have caused.

The bonds that unite another person to our self exist only in our mind.

If we are to make reality endurable, we must all nourish a fantasy or two.

We think and name in one world, we live and feel in another.

Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.

When I am not too sad to listen, music is my consolation.

What you should do is to say to outsiders that a Christian has neither more nor less rights in our association than an atheist.

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colours.

When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.

Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority.

Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it.

Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it.

Sometimes when I’m faced with an atheist, I am tempted to invite him to the greatest gourmet dinner that one could ever serve, and when we have finished eating that magnificent dinner, to ask him if he believes there’s a cook.