When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels within oneself the truth of what one reads, which was there before, although one did not know it. Hence one is inclined to love him who makes us feel it, for he has not shown us his own riches, but ours. ...such community of intellect that we have with him necessarily inclines the heart to love.

The last advance of reason is to recognize that it is surpassed by innumerable things; it is feeble if it cannot realize that.

When everyone is moving towards depravity, no one seems to be moving, but if someone stops he shows up the others who are rushing on, by acting as a fixed point.

It is not permitted to the most equitable of men to be a judge in his own cause.

We should seek the truth without hesitation; and, if we refuse it, we show that we value the esteem of men more than the search for truth.

Man's sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder.

What a chimaera then is man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm; depository of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle?