All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I cannot escape.

What a chimaera then is man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm; depository of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle?

All this visible world is but an imperceptible point in the ample bosom of nature.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past or the future.

Is it courage in a dying man to go, in weakness and in agony, to affront an almighty and eternal God?

Things have different qualities, and the soul different inclinations; for nothing is simple which is presented to the soul, and the soul never presents itself simply to any object. Hence it comes that we weep and laugh at the same thing.

We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us from seeing it.