If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.
Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.
The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory.
Our own interests are still an exquisite means for dazzling our eyes agreeably.
Lust and force are the source of all our actions lust causes voluntary actions force involuntary ones.
Faith is a gift of God.
Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience.
It is impossible on reasonable grounds to disbelieve miracles.
Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.
Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.
Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science...
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.
We like security: we like the pope to be infallible in matters of faith, and grave doctors to be so in moral questions so that we can feel reassured.
Two things control man's nature: instinct and experience.
Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.
The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.
All men have happiness as their object: there is no exception. However different the means they employ they aim at the same end.
The last advance of reason is to recognize that it is surpassed by innumerable things it is feeble if it cannot realize that.
Great and small suffer the same mishaps.
We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves we desire to live an imaginary life in the minds of others and for this purpose we endeavor to shine.