Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical.

If they [Plato and Aristotle] wrote about politics it was as if to lay down rules for a madhouse. And if they pretended to treat it as something really important it was because they knew that the madmen they were talking to believed themselves to be kings and emperors. They humored these beliefs in order to calm down their madness with as little harm as possible.

[Christianity] endeavors equally to establish these two things: that God has set up in the Church visible signs to make himself known to those who should seek him sincerely, and that he has nevertheless so disguised them that he will only be perceived by those who seek him with all their heart.

If man were happy, he would be the more so, the less he was diverted, like the saints and God.

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.

The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.

It is the contest that delights us, and not the victory.