We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us from seeing it.

Lust is the source of all our actions, and humanity.

Flies are so mighty that they win battles, paralyse our minds, eat up our bodies.

All that tends not to charity is figurative. The sole aim of the Scripture is charity.

I do not admire a virtue like valour when it is pushed to excess, if I do not see at the same time the excess of the opposite virtue, as one does in Epaminondas, who displayed extreme valour and extreme benevolence. For otherwise it is not an ascent, but a fall. We do not display our greatness by placing ourselves at one extremity, but rather by being at both at the same time, and filling up the whole of the space between them.

Law, without force, is impotent.

We need not have the loftiest mind to understand that here is no lasting and real satisfaction, that our pleasures are only vanity, that our evils are infinite, and, lastly, that death, which threatens us every moment, must infallibly place us within a few years under the dreadful necessity of being forever either annihilated or unhappy.