Man is so made that if he is told often enough that he is a fool he believes it.
Man is neither angel nor beast.
The law required what it could not give. Grace gives that which it requires.
Montaigne is wrong in declaring that custom ought to be followed simply because it is custom, and not because it is reasonable or just.
If I believe in God and life after death and you do not, and if there is no God, we both lose when we die. However, if there is a God, you still lose and I gain everything.
Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy.
All the maxims have been written. It only remains to put them into practice.
At the centre of every human being is a God-shaped vacuum which can only be filled by Jesus Christ.
True eloquence makes light of eloquence. True morality makes light of morality.
I would have far more fear of being mistaken, and of finding that the Christian religion was true, than of not being mistaken in believing it true.
We should seek the truth without hesitation; and, if we refuse it, we show that we value the esteem of men more than the search for truth.
Description of man: dependence, longing for independence, need.
Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble. So those on scepticism cause believers to affirm. Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, few doubtingly of scepticism.
All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.
It has pleased God that divine verities should not enter the heart through the understanding, but the understanding through the heart.
Jesus Christ came to tell men that they have no enemies but themselves.
God has given us evidence sufficiently clear to convince those with an open heart and mind...
A town, a landscape are when seen from afar a town and a landscape; but as one gets nearer, there are houses, trees, tiles leaves, grasses, ants, legs of ants and so on to infinity. All this is subsumed under the name of landscape.
Nothing is more dastardly than to act with bravado toward God.
Thought makes the whole dignity of man; therefore endeavor to think well, that is the only morality.