What are our natural principles but principles of custom?

The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.

The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.

If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!

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

There should be in eloquence that which is pleasing and that which is real; but that which is pleasing should itself be real.

Something incomprehensible is not for that reason less real.