“Distance is a great promoter of admiration!”
“Good music is very close to primitive language.”
“The best doctor is the one you run to and can't find.”
“There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.”
“Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.”
“Only passions, great passions can elevate the soul to great things.”
“Sentences are like sharp nails, which force truth upon our memories.”
“Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.”
“The blood of Jesus Christ can cover a multitude of sins, it seems to me.”
“All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.”
“It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.”
“Gaiety --a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.”
“Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.”
“I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don't remember ever having seen one weep.”
“The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.”
“The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.”
“We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.”
“We swallow with one gulp the lie that flatters us, and drink drop by drop the truth which is bitter to us.”
“There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.”
“Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.”
“It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire.”
“The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.”
“Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.”
“In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.”
“Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.”
“The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.”
“The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.”
“Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.”
“People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it. It freezes you to death, and in this world you've got to keep your feet warm.”
“Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.”