Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies governed by invariable laws.

The characteristic of scientific progress is our knowing that we did not know.

When a work lifts your spirits and inspires bold and noble thoughts in you, do not look for any other standard to judge by: the work is good, the product of a master craftsman.

The state of slavery is in its own nature bad.

There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking.

Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.

So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us.

Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.

Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.

Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.

Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come to being.

The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed.

When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.

God is related to the universe, as Creator and Preserver; the laws by which He created all things are those by which He preserves them.

Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.

It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well nor the judgment to hold their tongues.

People here argue about religion interminably, but it appears that they are competing at the same time to see who can be the least devout.

The words of the world want to make sentences.

It doesn’t matter if the water is cold or warm if you’re going to have to wade through it anyway.

There are only two cases in which war is just: first, in order to resist the aggression of an enemy, and second, in order to help an ally who has been attacked.

Two quite opposite qualities equally bias our minds – habits and novelty.

Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.

Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.

Logic is the technique by which we add conviction to truth.

Power ought to serve as a check to power.

Two half philosophers will probably never a whole metaphysician make.

Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of spiritual evolution.

Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.

There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.

Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanity.

I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.

One must always maintain one’s connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it.

Love and friendship exclude each other.

Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one’s wit at the expense of one’s better nature.

The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth.

Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world, we will...

Religious wars are not caused by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance… the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human...

There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.

We should laugh before being happy, for fear of dying without having laughed.

I would as soon say that religion gives its professors a right to enslave those who dissent from it, in order to render its propagation more easy.

Man is an imagining being.

Next to sound judgment, diamonds and pearls are the rarest things in the world.

Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.

Poetry is one of the destinies of speech… One would say that the poetic image, in its newness, opens a future to language.

The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.

They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more unreasonable than to pretend that a blind fatality could be productive...

There is only one thing that can form a bond between men, and that is gratitude… we cannot give someone else greater power over us than we have ourselves.

We must laugh before we are happy, for fear of dying without having laughed at all.

If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman… because I...

The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens...