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.
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.
We conceal it from ourselves in vain – we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.
Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.
Muhammad established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ by commanding his followers to lay down their lives.
Not the zeal alone of those who seek Him proves God, but the blindness of those who seek Him not.
Unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just.
You’re basically killing each other to see who’s got the better imaginary friend.
We must know where to doubt, where to feel certain, where to submit. He who does not do so, understands not the force of reason.
Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too.
What part of us feels pleasure? Is it our hand, our arm, our flesh, or our blood? It must obviously be something immaterial.
Nothing is so important to man as his own state; nothing is so formidable to him as eternity. And thus it is unnatural that thereshould be men indifferent to the loss of their existence and to the perils of everlasting suffering.
Seeing too much to deny and too little to be sure, I am in a state to be pitied.
Wisdom leads us back to childhood.
All of our miseries prove our greatness. They are the miseries of a dethroned monarch.
Let each of us examine his thoughts.
The last thing that we find in making a book is to know what we must put first.
We desire truth, and find within ourselves only uncertainty. We seek happiness, and find only misery and death. We cannot but desire truth and happiness, and are incapable of certainty or happiness.
Something incomprehensible is not for that reason less real.