Of all the animals with which this globe is peopled, there is none towards whom nature seems, at first sight, to have exercis’d more cruelty than towards man, in the numberless wants and necessities, with which she has loaded him, and in the slender means, which she affords to the relieving these necessities.

Poets … though liars by profession, always endeavour to give an air of truth to their fictions.

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.

The heart of man is made to reconcile the most glaring contradictions.

We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.