He wanted to know how they prayed to God in El Dorado. "We do not pray to him at all," said the reverend sage. "We have nothing to ask of him. He has given us all we want, and we give him thanks continually.
Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.
Individual misfortunes give rise to the general good; so that the more individual misfortunes exist, the more all is fine.
The Jews have always been waiting for a Messiah, but their Messiah is for them only, not for us, a Messiah ho will give them mastery over the Christians.
Give me a few minutes to talk away my face and I can seduce the Queen of France.
Come! you presence will either give me life or kill me with pleasure.
And ask each passenger to tell his story, and if there is one of them all who has not cursed his existence many times, and said to himself over and over again that he was the most miserable of men, I give you permission to throw me head-first into the sea.
This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.
It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships that they give credibility to the opinions they attack.
It is not the answers you give, but the questions you ask.
Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.
The man who leaves money to charity in his will is only giving away what no longer belongs to him