Quote collection
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"Every sensible man, every honest man, must hold the Christian sect in horror. But what shall we substitute in its place? you say. What? A ferocious animal has sucked the blood of my relatives. I tell you to rid yourselves of this beast, and you ask me what you shall put in its place ?"
"If you want good laws, burn those you have and make new ones."
"Where some states possess an army, the Prussian Army possesses a state."
"The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself."
"God created woman to tame man."
"Be bold, proclaim it everywhere: They only live who dare."
"The institution of religion exists only to keep mankind in order, and to make men merit the goodness of God by their virtue. Everything in a religion which does not tend towards this goal must be considered foreign or dangerous."
"It is the first law of friendship that it has to be cultivated. The second is to be indulgent when the first law is neglected."
"He who is involved in ecstasies and visions, who takes dreams for reality, and his own imagination for prophesy, is a fanatical novice of great hope and promise, and will soon advance to the higher stage and kill men for the love of God."
"Let us therefore reject all superstition in order to become more human; but in speaking against fanaticism, let us not imitate the fanatics: they are sick men in delirium who want to chastise their doctors. Let us assuage their ills, and never embitter them, and let us pour drop by drop into their souls the divine balm of toleration, which they would reject with horror if it were offered to them all at once."
"A physician is an unfortunate gentleman who is every day required to perform a miracle; namely to reconcile health with intemperance."
"We know that all the arts are brothers, that each of them illuminates another, and that a universal light results."
"What! Have you no monks to teach, to dispute, to govern, to intrigue and to burn people who do not agree with them?"
"There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics. ... We repeat, there was far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer."
"The punishment of criminals should be of use; when a man is hanged he is good for nothing."
"The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all."
"History is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play upon the dead."
"The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say; but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work."
"A man loved by a beautiful woman will always get out of trouble."
"I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow."