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Do freethinkers know that it is only ironically they are called strong-minded? What greater proof of their weakness of mind can they give than their uncertainty about the very principles of their existence, life, senses, knowledge, and what will be their end? What can be more discouraging to a man than to doubt if his soul be material, like a stone or a reptile, and subject to corruption like the vilest creatures? And does it not prove much more strength of mind and grandeur to be able to conceive the idea of a Being superior to all other beings, by whom and for whom all things were made; of a Being absolutely perfect and pure, without beginning or end, of whom our soul is the image, and of whom, if I may say so, it is a part, because it is spiritual and immortal?

Great things astonish and small dishearten us; custom familiarises us with both.

Of the common sensibles we already have a common perception, not an incidental one; so there is no special sense for them.

The sum of the whole matter is this: write quickly and you will never write well, write well and you will soon write quickly.

There must, I confess, be seizures of land, distraint on furniture, prisons, and punishments; but without taking into consideration justice, law, and stern necessity, it has always astonished me to observe with what violence some men treat other men.

We often convince ourselves we love those more powerful than we are, yet it is interest alone that produces our friendship; we do not give ourselves to them for the good we wish to do them, but for the good we wish to receive from them.

For to be a teacher is not to say: this is how it is, nor is it to set lessons and the like; no, to be a teacher is truly to be the learner. Instruction begins with this: that you, the teacher, learn from the learner, put yourself into what he has understood and how he has understood it, if you have not understood it yourself before; or that you, if you have understood it, let him, as it were, examine you, so that he can be sure you know your part: this is the introduction; then one can begin in another sense.

When we have done all that we can do for certain people in order to acquire their friendship, and we find we have been unsuccessful, there is still one resource left to us, which is, not to do anything more.

[Theophrastus] said that wicked people take less pleasure in their own good fortune than in the misfortunes of others.

A certain wife seems to have annihilated or buried her husband, for he is not so much as mentioned in this world; it is doubted whether such a man be alive or dead. In his family his only use is to be a pattern of timid silence and of implicit submission. He has nothing to do with jointure or settlement; if it were not for that, and his not lying-in, one would almost take him for the wife and her for the husband. They are for months in the house together without any danger of meeting one another; in reality they are only neighbours. The master of the house pays the cook and his assistants, but the supper is always served in my lady’s apartment. Often they have nothing in common, neither bed, board, nor even the same name; they live in the Greek or Roman fashion; she keeps her name, and he has his; and it is only after some time, and when a man has been initiated in the tittle-tattle of the town, that at last he comes to know that Mr. B ... and Madam L ... have been man and wife these twenty years.