For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.

There are two kinds of people one can call reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know him, and those who seek him with all their heart because they do not know him.

If there were only one religion, God would indeed be manifest.

All the miseries of mankind come from one thing, not knowing how to remain alone.

The property of power is to protect.

Those great efforts of intellect, upon which the mind sometimes touches, are such that it cannot maintain itself there. It only leaps to them, not as upon a throne, forever, but merely for an instant.

Passion cannot be beautiful without excess; one either loves too much or not enough.