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

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.

Men are much oftener thrown on their knees by the melancholy than by the agreeable passions.

The man who is master of his passions is reason's slave

Here then we are first to consider a book, presented to us by a barbarous and ignorant people, written in an age when they were still more barbarous, and in all probability long after the facts which it relates, corroborated by no concurring testimony, and resembling those fabulous accounts, which every nation gives of its origin.

The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.