Happiness is neither within us only, or without us; it is the union of ourselves with God.
To make a man a saint, it must indeed be by grace; and whoever doubts this does not know what a saint is, or a man.
In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart.
Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.
If God exists, not seeking God must be the gravest error imaginable. If one decides to sincerely seek for God and doesn’t find God, the lost effort is negligible in comparison to what is at risk in not seeking God in the first place.
The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.
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.
Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.
All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.
He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.
Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.
It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.
The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.
Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.
Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.
We can only know God well when we know our own sin. And those who have known God without knowing their wretchedness have not glorified Him but have glorified themselves.
In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.
When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.
The strength of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.
All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.