Seeing too much to deny and too little to be sure, I am in a state to be pitied.

There is nothing so insupportable to man as to be in entire repose, without passion, occupation, amusement, or application. Then it is that he feels his own nothingness, isolation, insignificance, dependent nature, powerless, emptiness. Immediately there issue from his soul ennui, sadness, chagrin, vexation, despair.

There are three means of believing--by inspiration, by reason, and by custom. Christianity, which is the only rational institution, does yet admit none for its sons who do not believe by inspiration. Nor does it injure reason or custom, or debar them of their proper force; on the contrary, it directs us to open our minds by the proofs of the former, and to confirm our minds by the authority of the latter.

When a soldier complains of his hard life (or a labourer, etc.) try giving him nothing to do.

Man lives between the infinitely large and the infinitely small.

The mind has its arrangement; it proceeds from principles to demonstrations. The heart has a different mode of proceeding.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.