I rather live as if God exists to find out that He doesn't than live as if he doesn't exist to find out He does.

Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.

Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first.

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

The last advance of reason is to recognize that it is surpassed by innumerable things; it is feeble if it cannot realize that.

What a chimaera then is man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm; depository of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle?

The multitude which does not reduce itself to unity is confusion.