It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.
The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.
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.
Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.
If our condition were truly happy, we would not seek diversion from it in order to make ourselves happy.
Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.
The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.
Concupiscence and force are the source of all our actions; concupiscence causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones.
The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.
Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.
The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.
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.
The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.
The only shame is to have none.
Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.
Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.
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.
Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.
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.
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...
