The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first.

Law, without force, is impotent.

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.

If it is an extraordinary blindness to live without investigating what we are, it is a terrible one to live an evil life, while believing in God

I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.

Just as all things speak about God to those that know Him, and reveal Him to those that love Him, they also hide Him from all those that neither seek nor know Him.

If we do not know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition, lust, weakness, misery, and injustice, we are indeed blind. And if, knowing this, we do not desire deliverance, what can we say of a man...?