This religion taught its children what men had managed to know only at their most enlightened.
There are only two kinds of men: righteous men who believe themselves sinners; the rest, sinners, who believe themselves righteous – Pascal.
There is enough light to enlighten the elect and enough obscurity to humiliate them. There is enough obscurity to blind the reprobate and enough light to condemn them and deprive them of excuse.
Justice is subject to dispute; might is easily recognized and is not disputed. So we cannot give might to justice.
God being thus hidden, any religion that does not say that God is hidden is not true, and any religion which does not explain why does not instruct. Ours does all thus. Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself.1.
Man is neither angel nor beast, and it is unfortunately the case that anyone trying to act the angel acts the beast.
The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first.
The strength of a man’s virtue must not be measured by his efforts, but by his ordinary life.
Let us then take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the Nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the Infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.
11 All great amusements are dangerous to the Christian life; but among all those which the world has invented there is none more to be feared than the theatre. It is a representation of the passions so natural and so delicate that it excites them and gives birth to them in our hearts, and, above all, to that of love, principally when it is represented as very chaste and virtuous. For the more innocent it appears to innocent souls, the more they are likely to be touched by it.
Instability. – It is a horrible thing to feel all that we possess slipping away.
As we cannot be universal by knowing everything there is to be known about everything, we must know a little about everything, because it is much better to know something about everything than everything about something.
So I hold out my arms to my Redeemer, who, having been foretold for four thousand years, has come to suffer and to die for me on earth, at the time and under all the circumstances foretold. By His grace, I await death in peace, in the hope of being eternally united to Him. Yet I live with joy, whether in the prosperity which it pleases Him to bestow upon me, or in the adversity which He sends for my good, and which He has taught me to bear by His example. 737.
The right way is to want what God wants. Christ alone leads to it. Via Veritas.1.
Man without faith can know neither true good nor justice.
All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions. However different the means they may employ, they all strive towards this goal. The reason why some go to war and some do not is the same desire in both, but interpreted in two different ways. The will never takes the least step except to that end. This is the motive of every act of every man, including those who go and hang themselves.
Man must not be allowed to believe that he is equal either to animals or to angels, nor to be unaware of either, but he must know both.
For I should like to know by what right this animal, which recognizes his own weakness, measures God’s mercy and keeps it within limits suggested by his own fancies.
Man is so made that if he is told often enough that he is a fool he believes it. By telling himself so often enough he convinces himself, because when he is alone he carries on an inner dialogue with himself which it is important to keep under proper control. Evil communications corrupt good manners.1 We must keep silence as far as we can and only talk to ourselves about God, whom we know to be true, and thus convince ourselves that he is.
Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling do not understand the process of reasoning, for they would understand at first sight, and are not used to seek for principles. And others, on the contrary, who are accustomed to reason from principles, do not at all understand matters of feeling, seeking principles, and being unable to see at a glance.