A mere trifle consoles us, for a mere trifle distresses us.
All the troubles of man come from his not knowing how to sit still.
Do you wish people to believe good of you? Don't speak.
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 possibility, I believe in God.
Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.
Experience makes us see an enormous difference between piety and goodness.
Force rules the world- not opinion; but it is opinion that makes us use force.
How useless is painting, which attracts admiration by the resemblance of things, the originals of which we do not admire!
I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.
If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.
In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.
It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that He should not exist.
It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the Truth.
Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.
Little things console us, because little things afflict us.
Man governs himself more by capriciousness than reason.
Man is so made that if he is told often enough that he is a fool he believes it.
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.
Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.
People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.
Silence is the greatest persecution; never do the saints keep themselves silent.
Since we cannot be universal and know all that is to be known of everything, we ought to know a little about everything.
The charm of fame is so great, that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread.
The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing.
The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
The present is never our goal, the past and present are our means; the future alone is our goal. Thus, we never live but we hope to live; and always hoping to be happy, it is inevitable that we will never be so.
The sole purpose of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.
There are people who lie simply for the sake of lying.
Thinking makes man great.
Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons.
We know the truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart.
We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.
We shall die alone.
What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, depository of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error, the glory and the shame of the universe.
When we are accustomed to use bad reasons for proving natural effects, we are not willing to receive good reasons when they are discovered.
When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing.
Found 38 occurence(s) in 52,551 quotation(s).
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