Men are so completely fools by necessity that he is but a fool in a higher strain of folly who does not confess his foolishness.
Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble.
The imagination enlarges little objects so as to fill our souls with a fantastic estimate; and, with rash insolence, it belittles the great to its own measure, as when talking of God.
Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical.
Who dispenses reputation? Who makes us respect and revere persons, works, laws, the great? Who but this faculty of imagination? All the riches of the earth are inadequate without its approval.
Who knows if this other half of life where we think we’re awake is not another sleep a little different from the first.
It is the conduct of God, who disposes all things kindly, to put religion into the mind by reason, and into the heart by grace.
Unless we love the truth we cannot know it.
If you want to be a real seeker of truth, you need to, at least once in your lifetime, doubt in, as much as it’s possible, in everything.
The truth about nature we discover with our brains. The truth about religion we discover with our hearts.
The entire ocean is affected by a single pebble.
The Fall is an offense to human reason, but once accepted, it makes perfect sense of the human condition.
That which makes us go so far for love is that we never think that we might have need of anything besides that which we love.
Silence is the greatest persecution; never do the saints keep themselves silent.
Equality of possessions is no doubt right, but, as men could not make might obey right, they have made right obey might.
How hollow is the heart of man, and how full of excrement!
Imagination cannot make fools wise, but it makes them happy, as against reason, which only makes its friends wretched: one covers them with glory, the other with shame.
It is not possible to have reasonable grounds for not believing in miracles.
It is not shameful for a man to succumb to pain and it is shameful to succumb to pleasure.
Justice is as much a matter of fashion as charm is.