Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair..

If I had more time I would write a shorter letter..

We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves..

Philosophers.-We are full of things which take us out of ourselves..

Men seek rest in a struggle against difficulties; and when they have conquered these, rest becomes insufferable..

It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us; the charms of novelty have the same power..

Wisdom leads us back to childhood..

No man ever believes with a true and saving faith unless God inclines his heart; and no man when God does incline his heart can refrain from believin….

We never love a person, but only qualities..

The heart has its order, the mind has its own, which uses principles and demonstrations. The heart has a different one. We do not prove that we ought….

You see, if the height of the mercury [barometer] column is less on the top of a mountain than at the foot of it (as I have many reasons for believin….

The heart has its reasons, which Reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things. It is the heart which feels God, and not Reason. This, then, ….

Law was once introduced without reason, and has become reasonable..

Whilst in speaking of human things, we say that it is necessary to know them before we love can them. The saints on the contrary say in speaking of d….

What a strange vanity painting is; it attracts admiration by resembling the original, we do not admire..

Il y a deux sortes d'esprits, l'un ge ome trique, et l'autre que l'on peut appeler de finesse. Le premier a des vues lentes, dures et inflexibles; ….

For as old age is that period of life most remote from infancy, who does not see that old age in this universal man ought not to be sought in the tim….

Force and not opinion is the queen of the world; but it is opinion that uses the force. [Fr., La force est la reine du monde, et non pas l'opinion; m….

The world is ruled by force, not by opinion; but opinion uses force..

Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, dive….

All men naturally hate one another. I hold it a fact, that if men knew exactly what one says of the other, there would not be four friends in the wor….