"Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words"

"Speculation, like nature, abhors a vacuum"

"As nature preserves a fixed and immutable order; it must clearly follow that miracles are only intelligible as a relation to human opinions, and merely mean events of which the natural cause cannot be explained by a reference to any ordinary occurren"

"Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad"

"So long as a man imagines that he cannot do this or that, so long as he is determined not to do it; and consequently so long as it is impossible to him that he should do it"

"If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past."

"Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself."

"I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused."

"Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many."