We need not have the loftiest mind to understand that here is no lasting and real satisfaction, that our pleasures are only vanity, that our evils are infinite, and, lastly, that death, which threatens us every moment, must infallibly place us within a few years under the dreadful necessity of being forever either annihilated or unhappy.

We do not rest satisfied with the present.... So imprudent we are that we wander in the times which are not ours and do not thinkof the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists. For the present is generally painful to us.

Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars. I will not forget thy word. Amen.

Custom creates the whole of equity, for the simple reason that it is accepted.

There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.

The state of man is inconstancy, ennui, anxiety.

The last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it.