The weakness of human reason appears more evidently in those who know it not than in those who know it.

Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble.

No one is ignorant that there are two avenues by which opinions are received into the soul, which are its two principal powers: the understanding and the will.

Who dispenses reputation? Who makes us respect and revere persons, works, laws, the great? Who but this faculty of imagination? All the riches of the earth are inadequate without its approval.

The multitude which does not reduce itself to unity is confusion.

The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.

To make a man a saint, it must indeed be by grace; and whoever doubts this does not know what a saint is, or a man.