Friendship is an arrangement by which we undertake to exchange small favors for big ones.
If one only wished to be happy, this could be horrible for the rest of civilisation; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.
In a free nation, it matters not whether individuals reason well or ill; it is sufficient that they do reason. Truth arises from the collision and from hence springs liberty, which is a security from the effects of reasoning.
Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.
[The Ottoman Empire] whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.
[The Pope] will make the king believe that three are only one, that the bread he eats is not bread...and a thousand other things of the same kind.
I can assure you that no kingdom has ever had as many civil wars as the kingdom of Christ.
Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?
A man should be mourned at his birth, not at his death.