The pagans do not know God, and love only the earth. The Jews know the true God, and love only the earth. The Christians know the true God, and do not love the earth.

Who confers reputation? who gives respect and veneration to persons, to books, to great men? Who but Opinion? How utterly insufficient are all the riches of the world without her approbation!

The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

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 imagination disposes of everything. It creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are the whole of the world.

All men have happiness as their object: there is no exception. However different the means they employ, they all aim at the same end.

The gist is that good and evil are foreordained. What is foreordained comes necessarily to be after a prior act of divine volition...Rather, everything small and large is written and comes to be in a known and expected measure.