The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important objects of philosophy.
Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little to cure diseases of which they know less in human beings of whom they know nothing.
It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.
Discord is the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it.
The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.
Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need.
When a man is in love, jealous, and just whipped by the Inquisition, he is no longer himself.
Reading nurtures the soul, and an enlightened friend brings it solace.
We offer up prayers to God only because we have made Him after our own image. We treat Him like a Pasha or a Sultan who is capable of being exasperated and appeased.
The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is their power to harm us.
We are intelligent beings: intelligent beings cannot have been formed by a crude, blind, insensible being: there is certainly some difference between the ideas of Newton and the dung of a mule. Newton...
Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day.
What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.
The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an...
And ask each passenger to tell his story, and if there is one of them all who has not cursed his existence many times, and said to himself over and over again that he was the most miserable of men, I...
All men are by nature free; you have therefore an undoubted liberty to depart whenever you please, but will have many and great difficulties to encounter in passing the frontiers.
Many are destined to reason wrongly others not to reason at all: and others to persecute those who do reason.
The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important aims of philosophy.
If we do not find anything very pleasant, at least we shall find something new.
Love has features which pierce all hearts, he wears a bandage which conceals the faults of those beloved. He has wings, he comes quickly and flies away the same.