Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy.

As we speak of poetical beauty, so ought we to speak of mathematical beauty and medical beauty. But we do not do so; and that reason is that we know well what is the object of mathematics, and that it consists in proofs, and what is the object of medicine, and that it consists in healing. But we do not know in what grace consists, which is the object of poetry.

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

Being unable to cure death, wretchedness, and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.

Anyone who found the secret of rejoicing when things go well without being annoyed when they go badly would have found the point.

Look for the truth, it wants to be found.

Therefore, those to whom God has imparted religion by intuition are very fortunate and justly convinced. But to those who do not have it, we can give it only by reasoning, waiting for God to give them spiritual insight, without which faith is only human and useless for salvation.