38 Quotes by Charles de Secondat

Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.

Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies governed by invariable laws.

Thus the creation, which seems an arbitrary act, supposes laws as invariable as those of the fatality of the Atheists. It would be absurd to say that the Creator might govern the world without those rules, since without them it could not subsist.

The state of slavery is in its own nature bad.

The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed.

Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one's wit at the expense of one's better nature.

Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?

They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more unreasonable than to pretend that a blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings?

Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune.