"There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth"
"There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous"
"The weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter"
"The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason"
"The immortality of the soul is a matter which is of so great consequence to us and which touches us so profoundly that we must have lost all feeling to be indifferent about it"
"The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing"
"The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched"
"The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men"
"The gospel to me is simply irresistible"
"The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice"
"The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me"
"The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy"
"The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death"
"That we must love one God only is a thing so evident that it does not require miracles to prove it"
"Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth"
"Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong"
"Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed"
"Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere"
"Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted"
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction"
"Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true"
"Men blaspheme what they do not know"
"Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness"
"Man's true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good"
"Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair"
"It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason"
"It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory"
"It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants"
"It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false"
"It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist"
"It is good to be tired and wearied by the futile search after the true good, that we may stretch out our arms to the Redeemer"
"In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't"
"In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious"
"Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world"
"I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute"
"Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known"
"He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him aright"
"Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us"
"Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature"
"Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back"
"Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God"
"Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them and not contrary to them"
"Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other"
"Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them"
