"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."

"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."

"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."

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed."

"We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end."

"Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other."

"Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately."

"The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me."

"Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree."

"Man's true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good."

"The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him."

"People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others."

"Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much."

"It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory."

"The immortality of the soul is a matter which is of so great consequence to us and which touches us so profoundly that we must have lost all feeling to be indifferent about it."

"There are two kinds of people one can call reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know him, and those who seek him with all their heart because they do not know him."

"I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter."

"Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes it fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way."

"One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better."

"In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious."

"Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair."

"Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion."

"Law, without force, is impotent."

"It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false."

"When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before."

"Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects."

"Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted."

"If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!"

"The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble."

"I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute."

"I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world."

"Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts."

"Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature."

"The self is hateful."

"Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care."

"The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice."

"Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death."

"Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world."

"The last proceeding of reason is to recognize that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it. There is nothing so conformable to reason as this disavowal of reason."

"Men blaspheme what they do not know."

"Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary."

"Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness."

"If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?"

"Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed."

"Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God."