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