Have courage, or cunning, when you deal with an enemy.

Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

I think these things firearms were invented by Satan himself, for they can't be defended against with (ordinary) weapons and fists. All human strength vanishes when confronted with firearms. A man is dead before he sees what's coming.

One must love humanity in order to reach out into the unique essence of each individual: no one can be too low or too ugly.

If we allow them any influence in our conscience, they become the cloak of evil, heresies and blasphemies.

Many receive advice, few profit by it.

The difference between the first- and second-best things in art absolutely seems to escape verbal definition - it is a matter of a hair, a shade, an inward quiver of some kind - yet what miles away in the point of preciousness!

If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can't deny a kind of respect for the great criminal.

Behold, a sower went forth to sow; And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up: Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them: But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

America is like a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair!

Justice was in all countries originally administered by the priesthood; nor indeed could laws in their first feeble state have either authority or sanction, so as to compel men to relinquish their natural independence, had they not appeared to come down to them enforced by beings of more than human power. The first openings of civility have been everywhere made by religion. Amongst the Romans, the custody and interpretation of the laws continued solely in the college of the pontiffs for above a century.

Sex-appeal is the keynote of our whole civilization.

From an ill-natured man take no loan.

IV. Every tax ought to be contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible, over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the state.

When I walk along with two others, they may serve me as my teachers. I will select their good qualities and follow them, their bad qualities and avoid them.

Whoever asserts a value, must bring its influence to bear. Whoever maintains that it has value regardless of the influence brought to bear by any individual human being who endorses it, is simply cheating.

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.

The hatefulness of a hated person is "real"-in hatred you see men as they are; you are disillusioned; but the loveliness of a loved person is merely a subjective haze concealing a "real" core of sexual appetite or economic association. Wars and poverty are "really" horrible; peace and plenty are mere physical facts about which men happen to have certain sentiments.

The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities - perhaps the only one - in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there.

The weakness of little children's limbs is innocent, not their souls.

One day, observing a child drinking out of his hands, he cast away the cup from his wallet with the words, "A child has beaten me in plainness of living."

Expect nothing more from philosophy than a voice, language and grammar of the instinct for Godliness that lies at its origin, and, essentially, is philosophy itself.

All seed except Mary was vitiated [by original sin].

Capitalism has brought about the emancipation of collective humanity with respect to nature. But this collective humanity has itself taken on with respect to the individual the oppressive function formerly exercised by nature.

Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, Nor time unmake what poets know.

First, most producers are employees of firms, not owners. Viewed from the vantage point of classical economic theory, they have no reason to maximize the profits of firms, except to the extent that they can be controlled by owners. Moreover, profit-making firms, nonprofit organizations, and bureaucratic organizations all have exactly the same problem of inducing their employees to work toward organizational goals. There is no reason, a priori, why it should be easier (or harder) to produce this motivation in organizations aimed at maximizing profits than in organizations with different goals. If it is true in an organizational economy that organizations motivated by profits will be more efficient than other organizations, additional postulates will have to be introduced to account for it.

Cleanness of body was ever deemed to proceed from a due reverence to God.

Effort supposes resistance.

The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.

We must have kings, and we must have nobles. Nature provides such in every society, - only let us have the real instead of the titular. Let us have our leading and our inspiration from the best. In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise. Let the powers be well directed, directed by love, and they would everywhere be greeted with joy and honor.

All agreed in rejecting that blasphemy, that Greece was ever a province of Asia, that the Greek spirit, so free, so objective, so limpid, could contain any element of the vague and obscure spirit of the Orient.

The word "art" does not designate the concept of a mere eventuality; it is a concept of rank.

Do not take part in the council, unless you are called.

Socrates: Dear Pan and all the other Gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him. Do we need anything more, Phaedrus? For me that prayer is enough. Phaedrus: Let me also share in this prayer; for friends have all things in common.

There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.

Recognize what is in your sight, and that which is hidden from you will become plain to you. For there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest.

The Bible is literature, not dogma.

He regarded it with the feelings due not to a mere mental delusion, but to a great moral evil. He looked upon it as the greatest enemy of morality: first, by setting up factitious excellencies,-belief in creeds, devotional feelings, and ceremonies, not connected with the good of human kind,-and causing these to be accepted as substitutes for genuine virtues: but above all, by radically vitiating the standard of morals; making it consist in doing the will of a being, on whom it lavishes indeed all the phrases of adulation, but whom in sober truth it depicts as eminently hateful.

When some one reminded him that the people of Sinope had sentenced him to exile, he said, "And I sentenced them to stay at home."

Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world. What is it, this egg, before the seed is introduced into it? An insentient mass. And after the seed has been introduced to into it? What is it then? An insentient mass. For what is the seed itself other than a crude and inanimate fluid? How is this mass to make a transition to a different structure, to sentience, to life? Through heat. And what will produce that heat in it? Motion. "Conversation Between D'Alembert and Diderot", as quoted in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker, and The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture (2004) by Louis K Dupré, p. 30 Variant translation: See this egg. It is with this that all the schools of theology and all the temples of the earth are to be overturned.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

What should a philosopher say, then, in the face of each of the hardships of life? "It was for this that I've been training myself, it was for this that I was practising."

The human body is an instrument for the production of art in the life of the human soul.

For a consistent naturalist science can only be a refinement of animal exploration, a practice humans have devised for finding their way in the bit of the universe in which they have so far survived. Instead of thinking of science as a law-seeking activity, we can think of it as a tool humans use to cope with a world they will never understand.

Throughout history there have been peasant rebellions which have followed always the same course. Blindly, the peasants sacked and destroyed, and when members of the "upper classes" fell into their hands, they killed ruthlessly and cruelly, for never in their lives had they been taught gentleness and mercy by those now in their power.

The simple-minded positivism that believes it has found a firm ground of certainty if it only excludes all mental phenomena from consideration and holds fast to observable facts.

The bigger the crowd, the more negligible the individual.

Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.