Imagination decides everything.

The present is never the mark of our designs. We use both past and present as our means and instruments, but the future only as our object and aim.

Imagination cannot make fools wise, but it makes them happy, as against reason, which only makes its friends wretched: one covers them with glory, the other with shame.

A town, a landscape are when seen from afar a town and a landscape; but as one gets nearer, there are houses, trees, tiles leaves, grasses, ants, legs of ants and so on to infinity. All this is subsumed under the name of landscape.

The state of man is inconstancy, ennui, anxiety.

Instinct teaches us to look for happiness outside ourselves.

To make a man a saint, it must indeed be by grace; and whoever doubts this does not know what a saint is, or a man.