One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

Must we kill to prevent there being any wicked? This is to make both parties wicked instead of one.

Knowing God without knowing our own wretchedness makes for pride. Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes for despair. Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the balance because he shows us both God and our own wretchedness.

What a chimaera then is man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm; depository of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle?

We are so presumptuous that we wish to be known to all the world, even to those who come after us; and we are so vain that the esteem of five or six persons immediately around us is enough to amuse and satisfy us.

We must keep our thought secret, and judge everything by it, while talking like the people.

Law was once introduced without reason, and has become reasonable.