Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.

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.

We have so exalted a notion of the human soul that we cannot bear to be despised, or even not to be esteemed by it. Man, in fact, places all his happiness in this esteem.

A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once.

[Unbelievers] think they have made great efforts to get at the truth when they have spent a few hours in reading some book out of Holy Scripture, and have questioned some cleric about the truths of the faith. After that, they boast that they have searched in books and among men in vain.

It is the conduct of God, who disposes all things kindly, to put religion into the mind by reason, and into the heart by grace.

Any unity which doesn't have its origin in the multitudes is tyranny.