Those whom we call ancient were really new in all things, and properly constituted the infancy of mankind..

Look somewhere else for someone who can follow you in your researches about numbers. For my part, I confess that they are far beyond me, and I am com….

Curiosity is nothing more than vanity. More often than not we only seek knowledge to show it off..

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 Christi….

La vraie e loquence se moque de l'e loquence, la vraie morale se moque de la morale. True eloquence has notime foreloquence, true morality has no t….

How vain painting is-we admire the realistic depiction of objects which in their original state we don't admire at all..

Tout notre raisonnement se re duit a' ce der au sentiment. All our reasoning comes down to surrendering to feeling..

Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries. Yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries..

they do not know that they seek only the chase and not the quarry..

The multitude which is not brought to act as a unity, is confusion. That unity which has not its origin in the multitude is tyranny..

Unless we love the truth we cannot know it..

It is superstitious to put one's hopes in formalities, but arrogant to refuse to submit to them..

There is nothing that we can see on earth which does not either show the wretchedness of man or the mercy of God. One either sees the powerlessness o….

Bless yourself with holy water, have Masses said, and so on; by a simple and natural process this will make you believe, and will dull you - will qui….

Extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them. This is our true state; this is what mak….

Death itself is less painful when it comes upon us unawares than the bare contemplation of it, even when danger is far distant..

What can be seen on earth points to neither the total absence nor the obvious presence of divinity, but to the presence of a hidden God. Everything b….

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..

When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels within oneself the truth of what one reads, which was there before, although one di….

Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort. Then ….

Plurality which is not reduced to unity is confusion; unity which does not depend on plurality is tyranny..