To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.
What a hell of an economic system! Some are replete with everything while others, whose stomachs are no less demanding, whose hunger is just as recurrent, have nothing to bite on. The worst of it is the constrained posture need puts you in. The needy man does not walk like the rest; he skips, slithers, twists, crawls.
If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.
It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.
Only the bad man is alone.
There is only one virtue, justice; only one duty, to be happy; only one corollary, not to overvalue life and not to fear death.
To be born in imbecility, in the midst of pain and crisis; to be the plaything of ignorance, error, need, sickness, wickedness, and passions; to return step by step to imbecility, from the time of lisping to that of doting; to live among knaves and charlatans of all kinds; to die between one man who takes your pulse and another who troubles your head; never to know where you come from, why you come and where you are going! That is what is called the most important gift of our parents and nature. Life.
Does anyone really know where they're going to?
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.
Give, but, if possible, spare the poor man the shame of begging.
It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire.
I picture the vast realm of the sciences as an immense landscape scattered with patches of dark and light. The goal towards which we must work is either to extend the boundaries of the patches of light, or to increase their number. One of these tasks falls to the creative genius; the other requires a sort of sagacity combined with perfectionism.
Scepticism is the first step toward truth.
The philosopher forms his principles on an infinity of particular observations. He does not confuse truth with plausibility, he takes for truth what is true, for false what is false, for doubtful what is doubtful, and probable what is probable. The philosophical spirit is thus a spirit of observation and accuracy.
First move me, astonish me, break my heart, let me tremble, weep, stare, be enraged-only then regale my eyes.
What is this world? A complex whole, subject to endless revolutions. All these revolutions show a continual tendency to destruction; a swift succession of beings who follow one another, press forward, and vanish; a fleeting symmetry; the order of a moment. I reproached you just now with estimating the perfection of things by your own capacity; and I might accuse you here of measuring its duration by the length of your own days.
It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all.
I am wholly yours - you are everything to me; we will sustain each other in all the ills of life it may please fate to inflict upon us; you will soothe my troubles; I will comfort you in yours.
To say that man is a compound of strength and weakness, light and darkness, smallness and greatness, is not to indict him, it is to define him.
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.
Gratitude is a burden, and every burden is made to be shaken off.
He whom we call a gentleman is no longer the man of Nature.
There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.
In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.
First of all move me, surprise me, rend my heart; make me tremble, weep, shudder; outrage me; delight my eyes afterwards if you can.
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