Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.

Curiosity is nothing more than vanity. More often than not we only seek knowledge to show it off.

The heart has its reasons, which Reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things. It is the heart which feels God, and not Reason. This, then, is perfect faith: God felt in the heart.

The mind has its arrangement; it proceeds from principles to demonstrations. The heart has a different mode of proceeding.

The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.

If they [Plato and Aristotle] wrote about politics it was as if to lay down rules for a madhouse. And if they pretended to treat it as something really important it was because they knew that the madmen they were talking to believed themselves to be kings and emperors. They humored these beliefs in order to calm down their madness with as little harm as possible.

The only shame is to have none.