The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. We feel it in a thousand things. I say that the heart naturally loves the Universal Being, and naturally loves itself; and it gives itself to one or the other, and hardens itself against one or the other, as it chooses...it is the heart that feels God, not the reason; this is faith.

Those great efforts of intellect, upon which the mind sometimes touches, are such that it cannot maintain itself there. It only leaps to them, not as upon a throne, forever, but merely for an instant.

The greatness of man is so evident that it is even proved by his wretchedness. For what in animals is nature, we call in man wretchedness--by which we recognize that, his nature being now like that of animals, he has fallen from a better nature which once was his.

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

[On vanity:] The nose of Cleopatra: if it had been shorter, the face of the earth would have changed.

The gist is that good and evil are foreordained. What is foreordained comes necessarily to be after a prior act of divine volition...Rather, everything small and large is written and comes to be in a known and expected measure.

Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; for in disobeying the one we are unfortunate, and in disobeying the other we are fools.