It has pleased God that divine verities should not enter the heart through the understanding, but the understanding through the heart.

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

You see, if the height of the mercury [barometer] column is less on the top of a mountain than at the foot of it (as I have many reasons for believing, although everyone who has so far written about it is of the contrary opinion), it follows that the weight of the air must be the sole cause of the phenomenon, and not that abhorrence of a vacuum, since it is obvious that at the foot of the mountain there is more air to have weight than at the summit, and we cannot possibly say that the air at the foot of the mountain has a greater aversion to empty space than at the top.

That a religion may be true, it must have knowledge of our nature.

Justice is what is established; and thus all our established laws will necessarily be regarded as just without examination, since they are established.

It is certain that the soul is either mortal or immortal. The decision of this question must make a total difference in the principles of morals. Yet philosophers have arranged their moral system entirely independent of this. What an extraordinary blindness!

Bless yourself with holy water, have Masses said, and so on; by a simple and natural process this will make you believe, and will dull you - will quiet your proudly critical intellect.