"Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just."

"If you gain, you gain all. If you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then, without hesitation, that He exists."

"Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere."

"That we must love one God only is a thing so evident that it does not require miracles to prove it."

"Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; for in disobeying the one we are unfortunate, and in disobeying the other we are fools."

"Justice is what is established; and thus all our established laws will necessarily be regarded as just without examination, since they are established."

"Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists."

"All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling."

"The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death."

"Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else."

"Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same."

"All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room."

"Continuous eloquence wearies. Grandeur must be abandoned to be appreciated. Continuity in everything is unpleasant. Cold is agreeable, that we may get warm."

"The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy."

"The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men."

"I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room."

"Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason."

"We like security: we like the pope to be infallible in matters of faith, and grave doctors to be so in moral questions so that we can feel reassured."

"The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing."

"When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person."

"Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness... and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him."

"We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart."

"Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true."

"As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all."

"Love has reasons which reason cannot understand."

"It is good to be tired and wearied by the futile search after the true good, that we may stretch out our arms to the Redeemer."

"Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves."

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."

"We never love a person, but only qualities."

"He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him aright."

"The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion."

"The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts."

"If our condition were truly happy, we would not seek diversion from it in order to make ourselves happy."

"The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever."

"Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth."

"Through space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; through thought I comprehend the world."

"Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them."

"Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?"

"To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher."

"The only shame is to have none."

"The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter."

"Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them."

"We conceal it from ourselves in vain - we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it."

"The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory."

"It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist."

"Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself."

"Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth."

"Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them."

"The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched."

"All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone."