Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.

The parts of the universe ... all are connected with each other in such a way that I think it to be impossible to understand any one without the whole.

It is a dangerous experiment to call in gratitude as an ally to love. Love is a debt which inclination always pays, obligation never.

We desire truth, and find within ourselves only uncertainty. We seek happiness, and find only misery and death. We cannot but desire truth and happiness, and are incapable of certainty or happiness.

The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.

All err the more dangerously because each follows a truth. Their mistake lies not in following a falsehood but in not following another truth.

Therefore, those to whom God has imparted religion by intuition are very fortunate and justly convinced. But to those who do not have it, we can give it only by reasoning, waiting for God to give them spiritual insight, without which faith is only human and useless for salvation.