We have so exalted a notion of the human soul that we cannot bear to be despised, or even not to be esteemed by it. Man, in fact, places all his happiness in this esteem.

Do you wish people to speak well of you? Then do not speak at all yourself.

We make an idol of truth itself; for truth apart from charity is not God, but His image and idol, which we must neither love nor worship.

I feel engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know nothing of me, I am terrified The eternal silence of these infinite spaces alarms me.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves.

Let no one say that I have said nothing new... the arrangement of the subject is new. When we play tennis, we both play with the same ball, but one of us places it better.