"The heart has its order, the mind has its own, which uses principles and demonstrations. The heart has a different one. We do not prove that we ought to be loved by setting out in order the causes of love; that would be absurd."

"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."

"Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars. I will not forget thy word. Amen."

"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."

"Finally, let them recognise that 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."

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

"Nature has made all her truths independent of one another. Our art makes one dependent on the other."

"Kind words produce their images on men's souls."

"Jesus Christ is a God whom we approach without pride and before whom we humble ourselves without despair."

"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."

"People often mistake their imagination for their heart, & so often are convinced they are converted as soon as they start thinking of becoming converted."

"Instinct teaches us to look for happiness outside ourselves."

"What a Chimera is man! What a novelty, a monster, a chaos, a contradiction, a prodigy! Judge of all things, an imbecile worm; depository of truth, and sewer of error and doubt; the glory and refuse of the universe."

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

"Continuity in everything is unpleasant."

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

"Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical."

"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."

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

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

"Great and small suffer the same mishaps."

"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."

"Just as all things speak about God to those that know Him, and reveal Him to those that love Him, they also hide Him from all those that neither seek nor know Him."

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

"If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous . . . There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason."

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

"In every 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 these things."

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

"Eloquence.- We need both what is pleasing and what is real, but that which pleases must itself be drawn from the true."

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

"No religion except ours has taught that man is born in sin none of the philosophical sects has admitted it none therefore has spoken the truth."

"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."

"All men have happiness as their object: there are no exceptions. However different the means they employ they aim at the same end."

"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."