Montesquieu

“ It is a country which all sects invade as if bent on pillage; it is a battlefield on which hostile nations encounter each other in endless engagements, attacking and skirmishing in every possible manner. ”

“ This is the delirium of devotion; often it develops, or rather degenerates into quietism; you must know that a quietist is nothing else than a madman, a devotee, and a libertine, all in one.
“There are the casuists, who expose the secrets of the night; who form in their fancy all the monsters which the demon of love can produce, collect them, compare them, and make them the everlasting subject of their thoughts; happy are they, if their hearts do not become accomplices in the many debaucheries they describe with such simplicity and directness! ”