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.

Orthodoxy on one side of the Pyrenees may be heresy on the other.

We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves.

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

We make an idol of truth itself; for truth apart from charity is not God, but His image and idol, which we must neither love nor worship.

By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.

A mere trifle consoles us, for a mere trifle distresses us.