Which is the more believable of the two, Moses or China?
Those great efforts of intellect, upon which the mind sometimes touches, are such that it cannot maintain itself there. It only leaps to them, not as upon a throne, forever, but merely for an instant.
Eloquence is a painting of thought; and thus those who, after having painted it, add something more, make a picture instead of a portrait.
Man is clearly made to think. It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. And the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our Author and our end.
There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present.
We do not weary of eating and sleeping every day, for hunger and sleepiness recur. Without that we should weary of them. So, without the hunger for spiritual things, we weary of them. Hunger after righteousness – the eighth beatitude.
The exterior must be joined to the interior to obtain anything from God, that is to say, we must kneel, pray with the lips, and soon, in order that proud man, who would not submit himself to God, may be now subject to the creature.
It is not in Montaigne, but in myself, that I find all that I see in him.
If man were happy, he would be the more so, the less he was diverted, like the saints and God.
The great mass of people judge well of things, for they are in natural ignorance, which is man’s true state.
The world is satisfied with words, few care to dive beneath the surface.
Being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.
Our notion of symmetry is derived form the human face. Hence, we demand symmetry horizontally and in breadth only, not vertically nor in depth.
The best defense against logic is ignorance.
The sole cause of all human misery is the inability of people to sit quietly in their rooms.
Symmetry is what we see at a glance.
Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired: even I who write this, and you who read this.
When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian.
Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.
All this visible world is but an imperceptible point in the ample bosom of nature.