By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.

It is superstitious to put one's hopes in formalities, but arrogant to refuse to submit to them.

Those great efforts of intellect, upon which the mind sometimes touches, are such that it cannot maintain itself there. It only leaps to them, not as upon a throne, forever, but merely for an instant.

Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.

That we must love one God only is a thing so evident that it does not require miracles to prove it.

Our imagination so magnifies this present existence, by the power of continual reflection on it, and so attenuates eternity, by not thinking of it at all, that we reduce an eternity to nothingness, and expand a mere nothing to an eternity; and this habit is so inveterately rooted in us that all the force of reason cannot induce us to lay it aside.

And is it not obvious that, just as it is a crime to disturb the peace when truth reigns, it is also a crime to remain at peace when the truth is being destroyed?