Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.

Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort. Then he feels his nullity, loneliness, inadequacy, dependence, helplessness, emptiness.

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 not feel them, though we suffer from their effects.

If we dreamed the same thing every night, it would affect us much as the objects we see every day. And if a common workman were sure to dream every night for twelve hours that he was a king, I believe he would be almost as happy as a king who should dream every night for twelve hours on end that he was a common workman.

The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.

We are so presumptuous that we wish to be known to all the world, even to those who come after us; and we are so vain that the esteem of five or six persons immediately around us is enough to amuse and satisfy us.

Bless yourself with holy water, have Masses said, and so on; by a simple and natural process this will make you believe, and will dull you - will quiet your proudly critical intellect.