"It is impossible on reasonable grounds to disbelieve miracles."

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

"Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen."

"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."

"It is not certain that everything is uncertain."

"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."

"Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything."

"No animal admires another animal."

"The last advance of reason is to recognize that it is surpassed by innumerable things it is feeble if it cannot realize that."

"Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it."

"I lay it down as a fact that if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world."

"The power of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special efforts but by his ordinary doing."

"People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive."

"Men seek rest in a struggle against difficulties; and when they have conquered these, rest becomes insufferable."

"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."

"We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavour to shine. We labour unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence, and neglect the real. And if we possess calmness, or generosity, or truthfulness, we are eager to make it known, so as to attach these virtues to that imaginary existence. We would rather separate them from ourselves to join them to it; and we would willingly be cowards in order to acquire the reputation of being brave. A great proof of the nothingness of our being, not to be satisfied with the one without the other, and to renounce the one for the other! For he would be infamous who would not die to preserve his honour."

"This dog is mine," said those poor children; "that is my place in the sun." Here is the beginning and the image of the usurpation of all the earth."

"Lust and force are the source of all our actions lust causes voluntary actions force involuntary ones."

"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."

"I made this [letter] very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter."

"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."

"We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves we desire to live an imaginary life in the minds of others and for this purpose we endeavor to shine."

"Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world."

"There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus."

"Men are so inevitably mad that not to be mad would be to give a mad twist to madness."

"Human beings must be known to be loved but Divine beings must be loved to be known."

"Concupiscence and force are the source of all our actions; concupiscence causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones."

"Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?"

"People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others."

"We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting."

"Men spend their time in following a ball or a hare it is the pleasure even of kings."

"Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it."

"Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us."

"Losses are comparative imagination only makes them of any moment."