One of the greatest artifices the devil uses to engage men in vice and debauchery, is to fasten names of contempt on certain virtues, and thus fill w….

Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness... and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons fo….

I take it as a matter not to be disputed, that if all knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world. This seems prov….

The imagination disposes of everything. It creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are the whole of the world..

The parts of the universe ... all are connected with each other in such a way that I think it to be impossible to understand any one without the whol….

Either God exists or He doesn't. Either I believe in God or I don't. Of the four possibilities, only one is to my disadvantage. To avoid that possibi….

To be mistaken in believing that the Christian religion is true is no great loss to anyone; but how dreadful to be mistaken in believing it to be fal….

To speak freely of mathematics, I find it the highest exercise of the spirit; but at the same time I know that it is so useless that I make little di….

The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble..

Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels hi….

When we do not know the truth of a thing, it is good that there should exist a common error which determines the mind of man, as, for example, the mo….

Quelque e tendue d'esprit que l'on ait, l'on n'est capable que d'une grande passion. However vast a man's spirit, he is only capable of one great pa….

Nobody is publicly accepted as an expert on poetry unless he displays the sign of poet, mathematician, etc., but universal men want no sign and make ….

Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference..

Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour,….

There are hardly any truths upon which we always remain agreed, and still fewer objects of pleasure which we do not change every hour, I do not know ….

A little thing comforts us because a little thing afflicts us..

You are in the same manner surrounded with a small circle of persons... full of desire. They demand of you the benefits of desire... You are therefor….

The secrets of nature are concealed; her agency is perpetual, but we do not always discover its effects; time reveals them from age to age; and altho….

One-half of life is admitted by us to be passed in sleep, in which, however, it may appear otherwise, we have no perception of truth, and all our fee….

We feel neither extreme heat nor extreme cold; qualities that are in excess are so much at variance with our feelings that they are impalpable: we do….