Let man reawake and consider what he is compared with the reality of things; regard himself lost in this remote corner of Nature; and from the tiny cell where he lodges, to wit the Universe, weigh at their true worth earth, kingdoms, towns, himself. What is a man face to face with infinity?

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

Men are so completely fools by necessity that he is but a fool in a higher strain of folly who does not confess his foolishness.

Man's grandeur is that he knows himself to be miserable.

The origins of disputes between philosophers is, that one class of them have undertaken to raise man by displaying his greatness, and the other to debase him by showing his miseries.

Great and small suffer the same mishaps.

The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.