The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

There is nothing so insupportable to man as to be in entire repose, without passion, occupation, amusement, or application. Then it is that he feels his own nothingness, isolation, insignificance, dependent nature, powerless, emptiness. Immediately there issue from his soul ennui, sadness, chagrin, vexation, despair.

The statements of atheists ought to be perfectly clear of doubt. Now it is not perfectly clear that the soul is material.

Mankind suffers from two excesses: to exclude reason, and to live by nothing but reason.

Let man then contemplate the whole of nature in her full and grand majesty... No idea approaches it. We may enlarge our conceptions beyond all imaginable space; we only produce atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere.

When intuition and logic agree, you are always right.

Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble.