“What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.”

“Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.”

“The best order of things, as I see it, is the one that includes me; to hell with the most perfect of worlds, if I'm not part of it.”

“You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, so all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals… What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to defer wise resolutions to the fiftieth or sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained.”

“Nous aimons, sans nous en douter, tout ce qui nous livre à nos penchants, nous séduit et excuse notre faiblesse.”

“A nation which thinks that it is belief in God and not good law which makes people honest does not seem to me very advanced.”

“There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.”