He who does not know his way to the sea should take a river for his guide.

Those we call the ancients were really new in everything.

Extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them. This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance... This is our natural condition, and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses.

We must make good people wish that the Christian faith were true, and then show that it is.

We must kill them in war, just because they live beyond the river. If they lived on this side, we would be called murderers.

Man is so made that by continually telling him he is a fool he believes it, and by continually telling it to himself he makes himself believe it. For man holds an inward talk with himself, which it pays him to regulate.

Eloquence; it requires the pleasant and the real; but the pleasant must itself be drawn from the true.