“Men never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience.”
“All man's miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone.”
“We must learn our limits. We are all something but none of us are everything.”
“If you would have people speak well of you, then do not speak well of yourself.”
“Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.”
“When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.”
“Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.”
“The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing: we know this in countless ways.”
“If all men knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world.”
“Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.”
“The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.”
“The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.”
“If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.”
“It is superstitious to put one's hopes in formalities, but arrogant to refuse to submit to them.”
“I have made this letter a rather long one, only because I didn't have the leisure to make it shorter.”
“We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves.”
“What a strange vanity painting is; it attracts admiration by resembling the original, we do not admire.”
“If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation, that He exists.”
“It is right that what is just should be obeyed. It is necessary that what is strongest should be obeyed.”
“People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found out by others.”
“I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.”
“Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.”
“Those are weaklings who know the truth and uphold it as long as it suits their purpose, and then abandon it.”
“Beauty is a harmonious relation between something in our nature and the quality of the object which delights us.”
“We never live, but we hope to live; and as we are always arranging to be happy, it must be that we never are so.”
“I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still and quiet in a room alone.”
“Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which is everything in this world.”
“The more intelligent one is, the more men of originality one finds. Ordinary people find no difference between men.”
“When we see a natural style, we are astonished and charmed; for we expected to see an author, and we find a person.”
“Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.”