There are vices which have no hold upon us, but in connection with others; and which, when you cut down the trunk, fall like the branches.

When one does not love too much, one does not love enough.

Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair.

The imagination enlarges little objects so as to fill our souls with a fantastic estimate; and, with rash insolence, it belittles the great to its own measure, as when talking of God.

Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.

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 men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.