All mortals are equal; it is not their birth,But virtue itself that makes the difference.

Don't think money does everything or you are going to end up doing everything for money.

One always speaks badly when one has nothing to say.

The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture for wild beasts to fight in.

Go into the London Stock Exchange - a more respectable place than many a court - and you will see representatives from all nations gathered together for the utility of men. Here Jew, Mohammedan and Christian deal with each other as though they were all of the same faith, and only apply the word infidel to people who go bankrupt. Here the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist and the Anglican accepts a promise from the Quaker.

If there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism, if there were two they would cut each other's throats, but there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness.

Where there is friendship, there is our natural soil.

All styles are good except the boring kind.

The superfluous, a very necessary thing. 

Paradise on earth is where I am.

The necessity of speaking, the predicament of having nothing to say, and the desire for tact are three things that can turn the greatest man into a laughingstock.

While loving glory so much how can you persist in a plan which will cause you to lose it?

Thought depends largely on the stomach. In spite of this, those with the best stomachs are not always the best thinkers.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

"If God did not exist, he would have to be invented." But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it.

The best is the enemy of the good.

I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.

I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.

Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson.

All philosophical sects have run aground on the reef of moral and physical ill. It only remains for us to confess that God, having acted for the best, had not been able to do better.

Man ought to be content, it is said; but with what?

Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them.

The public is a ferocious beast: one must chain it up or flee from it.

The king Frederic has sent me some of his dirty linen to wash; I will wash yours another time.

Ancient histories, as one of our wits has said, are but fables that have been agreed upon.

Love is of all the passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart, and the body.

I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, - astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc.

It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganges to learn geometry...But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the Brahmins' science not been long established in Europe...

If I had had more time, this letter would have been shorter.

It is said that God is always on the side of the big battalions.

It is a serious question among them whether they [Africans] are descended from monkeys or whether the monkeys come from them. Our wise men have said that man was created in the image of God. Now here is a lovely image of the Divine Maker: a flat and black nose with little or hardly any intelligence. A time will doubtless come when these animals will know how to cultivate the land well, beautify their houses and gardens, and know the paths of the stars: one needs time for everything.

Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one's garden.

Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours.

The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself.

When we hear news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all.

Whatever you do, crush the infamous thing, and love those who love you.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy, the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

Men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.

It is very strange that men should deny a creator and yet attribute to themselves the power of creating eels.

Where is the prince sufficiently educated to know that for seventeen hundred years the Christian sect has done nothing but harm?

A false science makes atheists, a true science prostrates men before the Deity.

Religion may be purified. This great work was begun two hundred years ago: but men can only bear light to come in upon them by degrees.

I always made one prayer to God, a very short one. Here it is: "O Lord, make our enemies quite ridiculous!" God granted it.

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

A witty saying proves nothing.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?