Knowledge has two extremes. The first is the pure natural ignorance in which all men find themselves at birth. The other extreme is that reached by great minds, who, having run through all that men can know, find they know nothing, and come back again to that same natural ignorance from which they set out; this is a learned ignorance which is conscious of itself.

The Christian religion teaches me two points-that there is a God whom men can know, and that their nature is so corrupt that they are unworthy of Him.

How hollow is the heart of man, and how full of excrement!

Imagination magnifies small objects with fantastic exaggeration until they fill our soul, and with bold insolence cuts down great things to its own size, as when speaking of God.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

If we do not know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition, lust, weakness, misery, and injustice, we are indeed blind. And if, knowing this, we do not desire deliverance, what can we say of a man...?

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.