Life has no meaning the moment you loose the illusion of being eternal.

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman... because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.

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?

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

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

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.

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

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

God is related to the universe, as Creator and Preserver; the laws by which He created all things are those by which He preserves them.