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

All great amusements are dangerous to the Christian life; but among all those which the world has invented there is none more to be feared than the theater. It is a representation of the passions so natural and so delicate that it excites them and gives birth to them in our hearts, and, above all, to that of love.

We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others.

Extremes are for us as if they were not, and as if we were not in regard to them; they escape from us, or we from them.

Eloquence is a way of saying things in such a way, first, that those to whom we speak may listen to them without pain and with pleasure, and second, that they feel themselves interested, so that self-love leads them more willingly to reflection upon it.

All the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.

Death itself is less painful when it comes upon us unawares than the bare contemplation of it, even when danger is far distant.