If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.
Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.
Human beings must be known to be loved but Divine beings must be loved to be known.
Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.
The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.
Imagination decides everything.
Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?
It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.
He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him aright.
When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.
The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory.
Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth give him too much, the same.
Man's true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.
We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.
Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us.
The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.
All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.
There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.
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.
Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.
Imagination disposes of everything it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.
Men often take their imagination for their heart and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.
Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.
Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.
Man's greatness lies in his power of thought.
The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.
Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them no art can keep or acquire them.
Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.
That we must love one God only is a thing so evident that it does not require miracles to prove it.
Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.
Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.
It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.
Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them and not contrary to them.
The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.
Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience.
experience, men & nature
The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.
If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.
Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.
The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.
Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.
Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.
Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.
To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.
Men blaspheme what they do not know.
The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.
Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.
It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.
Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see it is above, not against them.