I prefer the errors of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.

In art as in love, instinct is enough.

That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.

It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will. Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.

It is almost systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no difference between right and wrong.

Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.

What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation.

When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.

Suffering! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.